Oral Answers to Questions

WALES

The Secretary of State was asked—

Agriculture

Anne McIntosh: What recent meetings he has had with Cabinet colleagues to discuss agriculture in Wales.

Nick Ainger: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have regular discussions with ministerial colleagues on a range of subjects, including matters affecting agriculture in Wales.

Anne McIntosh: I am pleased to hear about the Secretary of State's ongoing discussions with other Cabinet colleagues. What precautions are the Government going to take to ensure that Welsh and other British farmers are not penalised in the next round of common agricultural policy reform? It is generally recognised that we have the most productive farmers, and they should be applauded for that. Europe should learn from that and our farmers should not be penalised—in Wales or in any other part of the United Kingdom.

Nick Ainger: I totally agree with the hon. Lady. It is important that we take forward the CAP reform agenda, and Britain is now acknowledged as leading in Europe on CAP reform. I can assure her that, although we want to introduce such reforms, the intention is not to penalise our own agricultural industry in doing so. It is clear that the reforms already in place have not penalised our farmers, and we want to continue in that vein.

Betty Williams: Does my hon. Friend agree that the lifting of the beef exports ban will bring enormous benefits to Welsh farmers? Will he take it from me, as a Member of Parliament brought up on a Welsh smallholding many years ago, that Welsh beef is the best and will be a good ambassador for Wales?

Nick Ainger: Indeed—I totally agree with my hon. Friend. It may help the House if I remind everyone of what we lost during the past 10 years because of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy disaster, which happened under the last Government, and the resulting beef ban. In 1995, beef exports from the UK were worth £600 million, and 270,000 tonnes of British beef were exported. We have lost all that in 10 years, and we need to regain those markets. I am glad to say that Hybu Cig Cymru is marketing Welsh beef in Europe, and we have been very successful in securing contracts, particularly in Italy.

Elfyn Llwyd: I agree with what the Minister has just said, but may I draw his attention to another important, current subject: the failure of the fallen stock scheme? This Government would not allow Wales, and north Wales in particular, to be exempted from the scheme, which, for obvious reasons that we warned about at the time, proved impractical. We now have rotting carcases throughout farms in north and mid-Wales, which is bad for biosecurity and human health and, I am afraid, the economy. Will the Minister please speak to his bungling colleagues in the National Assembly?

Nick Ainger: The issue is the failure of a company that has provided that service in north Wales, and I am assured that other companies are coming in to tackle the backlog. I agree that it is essential that we deal with the biosecurity issue, which is why the Assembly is tackling it by getting other fallen stock companies to clear up the backlog.

Cheryl Gillan: Borders mean nothing to animal disease, so dealing with tuberculosis in cattle and cattle movements between England and Wales requires close co-operation between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Assembly Government and the British Cattle Movement Service, as the Minister will doubtless acknowledge. What checks has he made on the co-ordination of data relating to pre-movement TB tests, and what percentage and number of TB reactors have so far been picked up in pre-movement testing in Wales?

Nick Ainger: I readily accept the need in the cross-border areas for both DEFRA and the Welsh Assembly Government's agriculture department to work closely together, and my understanding is that that is happening. The hon. Lady will understand why I cannot give her the detailed figures that she has requested, but I will write to her with them.

Asbestos

Stephen Hepburn: What estimate he has made of the number of people in Wales affected by the recent Law Lords judgment on compensation for asbestos-related illnesses; and if he will make a statement.

Nick Ainger: My hon. Friend will recognise that this is an extremely complex area of law. The Government are examining the implications of the Law Lords ruling. It is not possible to provide reliable figures at this stage.

Stephen Hepburn: I disagree with the Minister: this is not a complex area of law, and it is up to this Government to legislate to make sure that decent working-class people get what they deserve. Four people die every week in Wales from asbestos-related cancer owing to the negligence of their former employer. What is the Minister going to do about the absolutely disgraceful Law Lords ruling, which deprives working-class people of their rightful deserts?

Nick Ainger: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and other colleagues who are rightly campaigning on this issue. It is a vital concern for hundreds if not thousands of people who have been in contact with asbestos during their working lives. The Government fully understand the concerns expressed about the House of Lords judgment in the Barker  v. Corus case and we are sympathetic to the claimants. The judgment raises serious and complex issues and it is important to ensure that we get the right answer. We are therefore exploring all options with the relevant stakeholders to achieve a solution that is fair, but also workable.

Roger Williams: We support the Government in dealing with asbestos-related illnesses, but will the Minister also consider dealing with the miners who have dust-related injuries and have not yet received their compensation? I refer to one of my constituents, Donald Watkins of Pontneathvaughn, who has been waiting six and a half years. These miners are becoming older and iller by the day and the same sometimes applies to their widows. Will the Minister cut through the crap and ensure that they get the compensation that they deserve?

Hon. Members: Oh!

Mr. Speaker: Order. We should not use that sort of language in the House.

Roger Williams: Yes, Mr. Speaker.

Nick Ainger: I chair the coal health monitoring group for Wales and if the hon. Gentleman will let me know the details of his constituent who has been waiting too long for compensation, I will look into it. I should remind him, however, that this is the biggest industrial injury civil action case that the world has ever seen. Throughout the UK, we have already paid out £3 billion to miners; and in Wales the payment is £565 million. As I said, if the hon. Gentleman gives me the details, I will certainly inquire further into why it has taken so long to settle that case.

Michael Clapham: I want to reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn). The Barker decision was a disgrace and we must restore the position. The Minister will be aware of the enormous increase in the number of mesothelioma cases both in Wales and the UK more widely. For example, over the last 40 years, the number has increased from 153 to almost 2,000. Will my hon. Friend give his support to other Ministers in calling for an amendment to restore the law to what it was before the Barker judgment?

Nick Ainger: As I said in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Mr. Hepburn), we are very sympathetic to the position that claimants are in as a result of the Law Lords' judgment in the Barker  v. Corus case. We are hopeful that an announcement will be made shortly about how the Government intend to tackle that serious issue.

Welsh Produce

Michael Fabricant: What discussions he has had with the Welsh Assembly Government on encouraging the promotion of Welsh produce in England.

Nick Ainger: I have regular discussions with the Assembly Agriculture Minister about a range of issues, including the promotion of Welsh food and drinks products to external markets.

Michael Fabricant: If I were to take you, Mr. Speaker, to Dolffanog Fach, or perhaps the Old Rectory overlooking the Tal-y-llyn lake not far from Abergynolwyn in mid-Wales, you would have the opportunity to eat the finest Welsh beef made from Welsh black cattle. We heard about that earlier, but I should not have to take you that far, Mr. Speaker. I could take you to the White Hart in London, but other places do not serve Welsh black cattle beef. What can the Minister do to ensure that England and Scotland enjoy the benefits of the finest British beef—Welsh black cattle?

Nick Ainger: I am tempted to take the advice that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is giving me and suggest that the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) become an ambassador for Welsh produce. He is quite right that Wales produces some of the finest livestock in the world. Welsh black beef, in particular, is an excellent product. The Welsh Assembly Government have processing and marketing grants that assist in the marketing of Welsh produce, not just in England but throughout Europe. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to join me in congratulating the Welsh chef, Bryn Williams, on winning a chance to cook for the Queen's 80th birthday celebrations, and I am particularly pleased that he will be sourcing all his ingredients from Wales. That is another way of marketing Wales' excellent food products.

Chris Bryant: Has my hon. Friend noticed that much Welsh produce is often marketed in England as English? For instance, many of Burberry's materials are made in the Rhondda, but say "Made in England" all over them. For that matter, some of the best cricket players in this country who play for the English cricket team are actually made in Wales. Is it not time that we were a bit more honest and reminded the cricket authorities that they are the England and Wales Cricket Board? Would it not be nice if my hon. Friend were able to eat some Welsh—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Nick Ainger: We may have strayed a bit from the original question, but the National Assembly is concerned to promote the Welsh brand and to brand Welsh products—including cricketers, I expect. Several initiatives are under way on food products, and I welcome the opening last month of Lloyd's dairy in Islington, a recreation of one of the old Welsh dairy shops that used to proliferate in north and west London. Part of the shop specialises in and promotes Welsh organic produce.

David Jones: Does the Minister agree that fundamental to the promotion of Welsh produce in England is the ability to transport that produce to England in the first place? Does he therefore share my concern at the continuing closure of the A5 trunk road between Maerdy and Dinmael, which was closed with little warning on 26 May and remains closed with no indication of when it will be reopened? Does he share my despair at the incompetence of the Assembly in dealing with the issue?

Nick Ainger: I accept the importance of reopening the A5 as quickly as possible. As the hon. Gentleman will know, the closure was because of a serious risk of injury from an unstable cliff face. He will also be aware that while most landowners on the old A5, which could provide an alternative route, are co-operating with the Welsh Assembly Government, one has unfortunately decided not to do so at this stage. The matter needs to be addressed quickly and I understand that Andrew Davies, the Minister with responsibility for transport in Wales, is dealing with it as a priority. Its importance is recognised, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to make his views known, I will pass them on to Andrew Davies. Perhaps he should also make a direct approach.

Post Office

Mark Williams: If he will make a statement on the future of the Post Office network in Wales.

Peter Hain: The Government are fully committed to maintaining a viable Post Office network.

Mark Williams: I thank the Secretary of State for that response, but six out of 10 of the sub-postmasters in my constituency are concerned about the viability of their businesses once they lose the income from the Post Office card account in 2010. That has major ramifications for the wider community across rural Wales, which are some of the remotest communities in the country. I urge the Secretary of State to encourage his colleagues to undertake, at the very least, an urgent review of post office service provision in rural areas, and preferably to scrap the proposals to abolish the Post Office card account.

Peter Hain: We are looking closely at the matter, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are providing £150 million a year to support rural post offices, as part of a £2 billion investment in the post office network since 1999. None of that would have been made if his party's policy of privatising the Post Office had been implemented.

David Davies: Does the Secretary of State agree that it is the Government's rules on matters such as automatic credit transfer and the failure to support Post Office accounts that have led to post offices closing in rural communities the length and breadth of Wales? Will he apologise to the communities affected and tell us what the Government intend to do now to ensure that the post offices that remain continue to be viable?

Peter Hain: I have just described what we are doing. This is a difficult issue, and I remind the hon. Gentleman that it costs the Government 1p to pay a benefit into a bank account, but £1 per transaction to a Post Office card account. I know that in many villages in my constituency and, I expect, in his, there are senior citizens who depend on the local post office, and we want to see them kept open if at all possible. That is why we are providing the investment. But the issue is not as simple as just keeping the Post Office card account, and it is certainly not acceptable to support privatisation of the Post Office, as the Liberal Democrats advocate.

Adam Price: Banks have closed branches in rural and valley communities, and one adult in seven in Wales does not have a bank account. Does not the Secretary of State see that the Post Office card account, which is used by 360,000 people, is vital to combating financial exclusion in disadvantaged communities?

Peter Hain: I agree that the card account has played an important role in constituencies such as the hon. Gentleman's and mine, and that is why we are looking at it so carefully. However, another 25 different accounts, including bank services, can be accessed at post offices. This is an issue that we are going to address.

Cheryl Gillan: How do the Secretary of State's warm words square with what the Post Office chief executive said when he reckoned that he could do without 10,500 post offices? The Government are making that easier by removing income from post offices, and by the end of this month people will no longer be able to buy a TV licence at one. At present, they can use the cheque-and-send service to obtain a passport, for example, from the Bethcar street branch in Ebbw Vale, but will the introduction of the new biometric checks for passports mean that another service is to be lost, under Labour, to post offices and local people in Wales?

Peter Hain: Talking of Ebbw Vale, the Labour party in Blaenau Gwent is calling for the Welsh Assembly's post office development fund to be reopened. That is part of Labour's commitment to local post offices right across Wales.

NHS

Mark Harper: When he last met the Welsh Assembly Minister for Health to discuss the performance of the NHS.

Peter Hain: I regularly meet the First Minister and members of his Cabinet. The Assembly Government is investing record amounts in the NHS in Wales, and is delivering real improvements in the standard of services to patients.

Mark Harper: The Secretary of State may be aware that many of my constituents are registered with GPs based in Wales, and that they have to wait longer for treatment than others who are registered with GPs based in England. That unacceptable problem was supposed to have been fixed this April, but the decision has now been deferred until next April. Will he talk to his colleague the Secretary of State for Health and to the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that the decision is brought forward to as early a date as possible?

Peter Hain: I want to tell the hon. Gentleman how massive the improvements in health performance and waiting times in Wales have been. More than 213,000 extra patients have been seen in Welsh hospitals since we came to power. Waiting times have plummeted since 1997: in the past year, only 30 patients in Wales waited more than 12 months for treatment—a massive cut of nearly 14,500. The aim is that, by March next year, no patient will have to wait more than eight months. By the end of December 2009, the maximum total wait, from GP referral to receiving treatment, will be 26 weeks. That is a massive improvement, and the hon. Gentleman ought to welcome it.

Julie Morgan: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the dramatic turnaround in the health service in Wales is due to the hard work of NHS employees there? No patient now waits more than 12 months for in-patient or day-case treatment. Is that not a tremendous tribute to the work of the health service in Wales?

Peter Hain: I fully agree with my hon. Friend. When we came to power, people who needed orthopaedic operations, such as ex-miners and so on, had to wait years and years. That was what we inherited, but our investment in and reform of the health service in Wales have caused those figures to plummet. Moreover, since we came to power, we have been able to recruit 450 more consultants and more than 7,300 more qualified nurses in Wales. That is another sign that Labour invests in the NHS, and that the health service in Wales will be safe only under Labour.

Lembit �pik: Is the Secretary of State aware that the Telford and Wrekin primary care trust board plans to withdraw from the process of re-providing Shelton hospital? The lack of mental health provision in mid-Wales means that cutting that vital facility would have serious consequences for the whole of central Wales. Will he make representations to the Telford and Wrekin PCT, which is an English health trust, to protect a service that is crucial and irreplaceable?

Peter Hain: I fully accept that for the hon. Gentleman's constituents and for him this is a very serious matter and, of course, I am happy to make those representations to assist him and his constituents to see whether we can resolve the problem.

Cheryl Gillan: Sometimes I think that the Secretary of State lives on another planet and does not spend enough time in Wales. With the NHS in Wales 71 million in debt, the former chief executive of the ambulance service claiming that the service is in crisis and that lives are being lost, hospitals such as Withybush, Bronglais and Llandudno under threat, and 60 per cent. more people waiting for treatment than when the Assembly Government came to power, does the Secretary of State think that the Welsh Health Minister is fit for purpose?

Peter Hain: That really takes the biscuit. The hon. Lady does not even represent a Welsh constituency. I live in Wales. I am in Wales every weekend in my constituency, so she should not make accusations like that. When she looks at the record of health investment in Wales, plummeting waiting times, extra nurses, extra doctors, improved health performance, and 10 new hospitals being built or already built in Wales under our Government compared with all the hospital closures that the Tories were responsible for, she will realise that people in Wales know that it is only under Labour that the health service is safe in Wales.

2012 Olympics

Simon Hughes: What discussions he has had with the First Minister on maximising the opportunities for Wales from the 2012 Olympic games.

Nick Ainger: My right hon. Friend and I, along with the Welsh Assembly Government, are working to maximise the benefits brought to Wales by the London Olympic and Paralympic games. Wales has many excellent training facilities and will offer a warm welcome to visiting teams and their supporters, and I am delighted that the Millennium stadium in Cardiff will host part of the Olympic football tournament.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful for that answer. Will Ministers in the UK and Welsh Governments realise that, if we follow the example of the Sydney Olympics, where much of the training was done a long way away, there is a great opportunity to use the swimming facilities at Swansea, the velodrome in Newport, the Millennium stadium in Cardiff and, I am sure, the wide range of facilities in Blaenau Gwent? Will they all be put to maximum use and can we have a commitment?

Nick Ainger: I can certainly give that commitment to the hon. Gentleman. He is quite right that, at the Sydney Olympics, more than 400 million was spread throughout the economy in New South Wales in 2000. We intend to ensure that as much of the benefit as possible is spread throughout the UKparticularly in Wales. As he rightly says, we have a wide range of facilities: the velodrome, the national pool in Swansea and the Menai sailing centre. All those are good potential training facilities for teams and we will certainly push that forward.

Ian Lucas: The Olympic Delivery Authority has given a commitment that the 2012 Olympics will be the most sustainable ever. Given the strength of Wales's renewable energy manufacturing industry, such as Sharp UK in my constituency, which makes photovoltaic cells, will my hon. Friend meet me to discuss the potential for Welsh manufacturers to serve the Olympics in 2012?

Nick Ainger: I can certainly give my hon. Friend that assurance. He may know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already written to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to push the importance of renewable energy facilities in the new buildings related to the Olympic games. I will be able to give him further information when we meet in the near future.

Pensions

Albert Owen: What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effect of pensions policy on the people of Wales.

Peter Hain: The pensions White Paper shows that under our Government's policies, Welsh pensioners can be assured of proper pension provision in an ageing society.

Albert Owen: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that response. I welcome the Government White Paper, which is building a consensus for pensioners for the future. At present, many pensioners throughout Wales, including in my constituency, benefit considerably from the pension credit. Will he ensure that, during the transition period to the earnings link, pensioners on pension credit do not lose out; and will he further urge the Department for Work and Pensions to campaign vigorously so that there is a greater take-up of pension credits throughout Wales by our neediest pensioners?

Peter Hain: We will certainly do that. Indeed, the pension credit has been of enormous benefit to pensioners in Wales and, in particular, to some of the poorest pensioners in Blaenau Gwent, where 4,760 of them have benefited from it. The people of Blaenau Gwent and Wales as a whole need to be told by the Leader of the Opposition whether he will maintain his policy of abolishing the pension credit system.

Hywel Williams: Does the Secretary of State accept that many people in Wales are disappointed by the Government's pension proposals and would much prefer a citizens pension that is paid to everyone at a decent level to be a right of Welsh citizenship?

Peter Hain: The people of Wales pensioned off Plaid Cymru years ago. It is the Labour party that is providing a future policy for the people of Wales and the United Kingdom so that they can look forward to security and decency in retirement.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked

Engagements

Roger Berry: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 7 June.

Tony Blair: Before I list my engagements, I know that the whole House will join me in sending our condolences to the families of Lieutenant Tom Mildinhall and Lance-Corporal Paul Farrelly, who, sadly, were killed in Iraq last week. They were doing a vital job for their country and the security of the wider world, and we should be proud of them.
	This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I will have further such meetings later today.

Roger Berry: I am sure that the whole House will wish to be associated with the Prime Minister's remarks.
	My right hon. Friend will be aware that there are political groups in the European Parliament that are opposed to women standing for election, that are homophobic and that wish to ban bicycle riding on Sundays. Will he undertake to keep this Government in the mainstream of European politics, rather than on the extreme right-wing fringe, where the Opposition would like to put us?

Tony Blair: It would be a gross error of judgment and leadership to leave the mainstream groupings in Europe, because that would marginalise a party in Europeand if the Conservative party were ever to be the Government, that would marginalise the Government. If one wants any proof of that, one can see that the Conservative party website boasts about the role played by one of its members in the services directorate as a spokesman for the European People's Party, although the party now wants to leave that group. I suggest that the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) show some leadership and ditch that policy as well.

David Cameron: May I add my tribute and those of my hon. Friends to the soldiers who died in Iraq serving their country? I also add a tribute to the members of the camera crew who lost their lives in Iraq.
	In the past week, we have discovered that in each of the past two years almost 2 million households have been overpaid tax credits, by 2 billion. Some of the poorest households in Britain are now having that money painfully clawed back. The Treasury Committee says that the Department was incompetent. Will the Prime Minister tell us which member of the Cabinet is responsible for this piece of incompetence?

Tony Blair: Let me just point out to the right hon. Gentleman that tax credits provide support to some 20 million in this country, including 6 million families and 10 million children. They are responsible for lifting 700,000 children out of poverty and 2 million pensioners out of acute hardship. The Government are proud of the role that tax credits are playing in alleviating poverty in our country.

David Cameron: The Chancellor is responsibleand it has come to a pretty pass when the Prime Minister cannot even bear to say his name. Citizens Advice says that the Chancellor's system has left families in severe hardship and that the number of people coming for help has not dropped. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who was the first welfare reform Minister in this Government, says that the Chancellor's approach is
	like attempting keyhole surgery with a hacksaw.
	What is the Prime Minister going to do to ensure that the Chancellor takes responsibility and sorts out this mess?

Tony Blair: With the greatest respect to the right hon. Gentleman, let me point out to him what tax credits have enabled us to do. We have 2 million more people at work in this country. That is in part not just because of the minimum wage, which he opposed, but because of the working families tax credit, which makes work pay for people. As a result of the children's tax credit, we have been able to give help to millions of families in this country. Those families were let down by the Tory years of boom-and-bust economics, high unemployment and poverty, which was why we made the change, and we are proud of it.

David Cameron: But all our surgeries are full of the victims of incompetence [Interruption.] Yes, his incompetencethe Chancellor designed and administered the tax credit system, yet he has not made a single statement, or answered a single oral question in the House of Commons, on tax credits in the past year. Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that Ministers should not just blame officials when things go wrong. I agree with that. But is not the Chancellor's behaviour typical of this Government? Ministers create a massive bureaucracy that becomes a painful paper chase for hard-working families, so why do they refuse to take responsibility when it all goes wrong?

Tony Blair: The right hon. Gentleman talks about families coming to his constituency and other constituenciesbut we remember when families used to come to our constituency surgeries at the time of 10 or 15 per cent. interest rates, with kids who could not get jobs for years. There were families with kids living in poverty, and nothing was done about it. Yes, it is truetax credits have helped millions of families in this country. The problems that are there will be dealt with. We are glad that under this Government families have not just a stable economy, but a Government who back children and families, and help them out of poverty into work and into a decent standard of living.

Eddie McGrady: The Prime Minister has indicated that the nuclear energy option is back on the agenda for policy review. Will he recognise that many of us, particularly people on the east coast of Ireland, are totally opposed to the expansion of nuclear energy because of our experiences of the output, the outfall and the discharges from Sellafield? What cognisance and what weight will be given to the opinion of the people of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland, who will be affected if the policy is pursued?

Tony Blair: Of course we will give full weight to that. That is one of the reasons why we have reduced discharges considerably over the past few years. However, I must tell my hon. Friend that this is not about an expansion of nuclear power. The fact is that over the next 15 or 20 years we will lose that 20 per cent. of our electricity presently generated by nuclear power. It is in the interests of people in Northern Ireland and in the whole of the United Kingdom that we have secure supplies of energy for the future. Therefore, we need a balanced energy policy. A major component of that will be additional renewable energy and a big push on energy efficiency. My own view is that we need a mix of all these things if we are to safeguard the future of the country.

Menzies Campbell: May I begin by associating my right hon. and hon. Friends with the expressions of sympathy and condolence for those who have died in Iraq? Such events happen too often on the occasion of these proceedings.
	Can the Prime Minister confirm that the United Kingdom has given no logistical support for rendition to the CIA nor provided any information to be used in torture?

Tony Blair: We have said absolutely all that we have to say on this. There is nothing more to add to it. The Council of Europe report adds nothing new whatever to the information that we have.

Menzies Campbell: I think that the Prime Minister might find careful reading of the Council of Europe report particularly rewarding. It says that rendition involves disappearances, secret detention and unlawful transfers to countries that practise torture. On 7 December the Prime Minister told the House that he fully endorsed rendition. Does he still do so now?

Tony Blair: I think that what I actually said was that rendition had been the policy of the American Government for a long period, under the last Administration as well as this Administration. We have kept Parliament informed of all the requests that we are aware of: four in 1998, two of which were granted and two declined. As for the rest of what is in the Council of Europe's report, that concerns other countries, and obviously I am not in a position to speak about them.

Judy Mallaber: Last year the Derbyshire asbestos support team helped nine people in Amber Valley suffering from asbestos-related diseases, two of whom have since died from mesothelioma. Will my right hon. Friend discuss with his Cabinet colleagues whether the excellent Compensation Bill that will be discussed in the House tomorrow can be amended to reverse the appalling House of Lords Barker judgment that denies justice and compensation to many people suffering from that long-drawn-out disease?

Tony Blair: I totally understand my hon. Friend's concern. As I said a short time ago in the House, we are looking at this very carefully in the context of the legislation that she described, and I hope that we will be in a position to make an announcement shortly.

John Hemming: I start by declaring an interest because, along with the governor of California and one or two hon. Members, my body mass index is over 30. A growing number of primary care trusts have refused to put patients on waiting lists unless their body mass index is under 30, to save money, reduce deficits and ration health care. Does the Prime Minister believe that that is an acceptable way of rationing access to health care?

Tony Blair: What I can tell the hon. Gentleman about the waiting times in his area[Hon. Members: Answer!] Well, he was talking about people who have been put on waiting lists, and the fact is that the number of people waiting more than six months for treatment was 5,000 when we came to power, but it is zero today. What is more, in-patients are being treated more quickly. Under this Government, we are investing more and the national health service is getting better.

Dari Taylor: My right hon. Friend knows the joys of family life. He knows, too, that this Saturday is national infertility day. Thousands of couples remain childless, and they desperately hope to access the medical intervention of in vitro fertilisation in the hope that it will give them the precious gift of a child. Will he restate the commitment that he gave in February 2004 that every infertile couple should be given one NHS IVF treatment, and will he join me in condemning the 25 per cent. of primary care trusts that deny people access to IVF and other PCTs that claim that it is only available to couples over 30, when the intervention process is seriously dysfunctional?

Tony Blair: We are working with the leading organisation for patients requiring fertility treatmentthe Infertility Network UKto help them in their relationships with the primary care trusts to make sure that their voice is heard. Ultimately, those are decisions for primary care trusts, but it is important that the cycle of treatment is available to people. Obviously, it is agonising for the families involved, which is one reason why we asked the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to produce a report, which was published last December. We will do all that we can to take it forward.

David Cameron: Fatal stabbings have increased by almost a fifth in the past eight years, and now represent a third of all recorded killings. Six months ago, the Labour party voted against our proposal to increase the sentence for carrying a knife. Will the Prime Minister confirm that he will support a tougher sentence, and will he tell us when it will be introduced in the House?

Tony Blair: As I think the Home Secretary has made clear, we will look carefully at the issue of whether we need to toughen the minimum standard for sentences for individuals who are in illegal possession of a knife. As my right hon. Friend explained when this was debated, there are issues about whether it is possible to do this in a sensible way, but I totally agree that knife crime is extremely serious. That is why we have extended the types of knives banned under the legislation, and why we have made surefor example, in sentencing guidelinesthat sentences are tough for individuals who carry knives.

David Cameron: But in December 2004, on This Morning on ITV, the Prime Minister said that he would look at toughening sentences for carrying knives. Why did nothing happen?

Tony Blair: A lot has happened [ Interruption. ] May I just explain what has happened? Following the introduction of the legislation, if a knife is listed as an offensive weapon, the maximum penalty for carrying it is four years. Since 1997 we have added stealth knives, disguised knives and batons to the offensive weapons list. We are raising the minimum age at which someone can buy a knife from 16 to 18. There is a new offence of using someone to mind a weapon, and there are extra powers, along with extra resources, for head teachers to search pupils for weapons. In addition, there was a national knife amnesty a short time ago. I will look at whether we need to increase minimum sentences. As I said, the issues were explained in detail when the matter was last debated, but in principle, we want to make sure that anybody who is found in illegal possession of a knife is subject to the toughest penalties possible. May I point out to the House that in respect of firearms, we introduced a mandatory minimum five-year sentence, which is now in operation?

Graham Stringer: At about the same time as Kiyan Prince was being murdered with a knife, a head teacher at a school in my constituency was being forced by the independent appeals panel to take a boy back into school. The boy had been found in possession of a knife, and had been found guilty of violent conduct. Understandably, the head teacher is angry and in despair at this perverse judgment of the appeals panel. Will my right hon. Friend look into the case, with a view to changing the procedures so that such a perverse judgment cannot be made again?

Tony Blair: I certainly will. It seems an extraordinary decision to come to. These decisions are made by people locally, but I will certainly look into the point that my hon. Friend raises.

Andrew MacKay: In the light of yesterday's report from the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, does the Prime Minister now accept that my constituents are right in believing that the huge number of extra homes being foisted on the south-east by the Deputy Prime Minister will make the current water crisis even worse?

Tony Blair: No, they will not. There is provision for the additional homes that are to be built to have the proper water supply. We work carefully with Ofwat and with the water companies to achieve that. It is all very well for the right hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues to say that they are against the building of new homesbut let me read to him what the shadow Chancellor said just a few days ago, when addressing something called  Property Week, which I suppose is intended for property developers. He said:
	We should increase supply of affordable new homes...We should see if we can make new land available for development, but we should demand that developers do not simply bank it but bring it forward for building.
	So I think there is a slight instance of the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) saying one thing and the right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) saying another.

Andy Reed: As you are aware, because of your generous support, Mr. Speaker, 100 Members from all parts of the House will be taking part in the Westminster mile for Sport Relief in the next hour or so, to be started by Roger Bannister. Will my right hon. Friend pass on his congratulations to Sport Relief on its work and the projects that it runs? Will he commit himself to taking part, as he did in 2004? Most importantly, will he put at the heart of the Government's approach tackling poverty both at home and abroad, to make sure that in the future projects like Sport Relief are not needed, because we have the means and the technologynow we just need the political willto tackle the worst causes of poverty across the globe?

Tony Blair: I am taking part in the mile run in aid of Sport Relief, and my hon. Friend is right to say that it is important. I understand that more than 100 hon. Members have signed up to run. My briefing tells me to say that I hope that the sight of MPs in their running gear will encourage all people to participate in the run. That may be slightly sanguine, but it is an excellent idea none the less, and Sport Relief does a huge amount of work right across the globe to relieve poverty.

Shailesh Vara: Every year hundreds and possibly thousands of people, including young children, are brought into this country under the cruel practice of human trafficking. This is modern-day slavery. What measures does the Prime Minister have in mind to ensure that this barbaric practice is put to an end in the United Kingdom and abroad?

Tony Blair: The most important thing is to work with the new Serious Organised Crime Agency, which has a specific remit, along with the intelligence services, to try to track down those who are engaged in people trafficking. The hon. Gentleman is right to describe it as a problem, but the only way of resolving it is by means of the measures that we have introduced, which will allow us to seize the assets of people engaged in this trade. I hope that when we introduce new measures, which we will do in the autumn, specifically to tackle organised crime, of which people trafficking is a part, his party will support those measures. The last time we introduced such measures [Interruption.] I am afraid that the Opposition did not support them. It is important that the next time we do, they do.

Jim Devine: Does my right hon. Friend share the concerns that many of us have about the increase and potential increase in counterfeit drugs? More than 2,400 internet sites sell drugs, of which experts believe 80 per cent. are counterfeit. Last year, a man with a lab in his kitchen that could produce a million drugs a day was jailed, and two weeks ago in my constituency two people were arrested in connection with chemicals that could produce a date rape drug. Does he share our concerns?

Tony Blair: I do, and my hon. Friend is quite right to say that this is not just a problem here but a global problem. We are working closely with the Medicines and Health Care products Regulatory Agency, the industry and other key stakeholders and international counterparts to combat the threat of counterfeit medicines, so I can assure him that we take it very seriously indeed.

Michael Weir: The Prime Minister may have seen the remarks by his colleague, the Labour Mayor of London, that Crossrail is necessary to enable Scotland to live the lifestyle to which it is accustomed. Does that not show something of a brass neck, considering that this year 12 billion of Scottish oil revenues are enabling the Prime Minister's Government to live in the style to which they have become accustomed?

Tony Blair: Crossrail is important for London and the whole country, but what would be absolutely disastrous for Scotland would be to separate Scotland from the United Kingdom. That would be devastating for jobs in Scotland, devastating for the economy and devastating for the Scottish people, which is probably why the hon. Gentleman supports it.

Jeff Ennis: Will my right hon. Friend accept my personal gratitude for his swift response to a recent meeting that I had in his office, along with the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) and representatives from the Association of Children's Hospices, in granting an additional 27 million over the next three years to children's hospices? That is fantastic news, but will my right hon. Friend give me his reassurance that the Government will continue to have discussions and engage with the association, not just in the short term but in the medium and long term, on children's palliative care?

Tony Blair: I congratulate my hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) and others who made their case in an extremely persuasive way, along with the children's hospice movement. We are pleased that we have been able to find 27 million over the next three years. My hon. Friend is right that we also need to review the long-term arrangements for the way in which hospices are fundeda point that was impressed on me very strongly. That review will now take place, and we will work closely with the children's hospice movement and others, including my hon. Friend, to find the right solution.

Lembit �pik: As the Prime Minister has already said, he rightly seeks to secure the energy security of the UK in the future. In this context, once the energy review has published its findings, or even before that, will he meet a delegation led by the Centre for Alternative Technology to discuss how Wales could address its energy needs by entirely sustainable means and without nuclear power? Clearly, such a meeting would not commit him to that blueprint, but the dialogue would contribute towards our shared goal of addressing the looming energy crisis safely and effectively.

Tony Blair: I am sure that it is important that we engage in a dialogue with all interested groups, including the Centre for Alternative Technology, but the hon. Gentleman will realise that we must balance the energy interests of the whole of the United Kingdom.

Michael Jabez Foster: The pension credit system has been absolutely brilliant in my constituency. More than 5,600 pensioners now receive up to 30 a week more than they would have done if the Tories' income support had stayed. But just occasionally, errors are made. When official error does occur, will my right hon. Friend endorse the sympathetic approach that is usually applied by officials when hardship results?

Tony Blair: That is important, of course, particularly when dealing with pensioners, but my hon. Friend is right to say that as a result of the pension credit, there are people who are receiving 40 a week more. These are pensioners who under the previous Government in the winter months would very often have to choose between heating and eating. Now they have not merely the winter fuel allowance, but the extra support for energy and home insulation. The pension credit gives literally hundreds of thousands of pensioners a decent standard of living for the first time in their lives, and we can be very proud of having introduced it.

Danny Alexander: Is the Prime Minister aware that ending the sale of television licences at post offices, together with ending the Post Office card account, will cause a catastrophic loss of income for many thousands of post offices, as well as serious inconvenience for many people living in rural areas? Will he meet a delegation of postmasters from the highlands to discuss how his Government can better support post offices, rather than undermining them at every turn?

Tony Blair: It is not our intention to undermine post offices, but as technology and people's lifestyles change, it is necessary to make reforms. The problem is that we already subsidise our post offices to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds, and we must look carefully at how we manage to make ends meet within the public finances while providing rational and logical support to post offices. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will make his point to the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Jim Cunningham: I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware that there is concern in the west midlands about manufacturing. With Peugeot, the trade unions appreciate the fact that the Government got discussions going, but the problem is that the company will not engage in meaningful discussions about the trade unions' alternative. Will my right hon. Friend have a word with the company's senior executives to start meaningful discussions?

Tony Blair: I certainly agree that it is important that the company gives the unions' alternative proposal to keep Ryton open the most serious consideration, and we will do what we can to make sure that it does. In the end, the matter is a commercial decision for the company, and I think that everyone understands that, but if anybody is made redundant, the partnership that has been set up in the area will do its utmost to make sure that they are given the fullest possible support. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important that every alternative is considered, because the closure of that plant would mean difficulty and hardship for hundreds of families.

Derek Conway: Is the Prime Minister aware that there will be great delight at yesterday's acquittal of the guardsmen? However, there will also be bewilderment, and indeed a degree of shame, that men with such fine service should have been placed in such a position on such flimsy evidence. Can the Prime Minister imagine what it is like to be a young soldier in Basra, having to look ahead for bombers and snipers and behind for the Attorney-General?

Tony Blair: That last point is wrong and unfair. I am delighted that the soldiers were acquitted, and I hope that the lessons will be learned by the prosecuting authorities. As the hon. Gentleman knowsI hope that he will not suggest otherwisedecisions to prosecute are entirely separate from Ministers.

Si�n Simon: Thanks to the Chancellor's economic miracle, unemployment, which the Tories deliberately caused, has been eradicated in most of this country, but in some constituencies, such as mine, it remains a serious problem that lies at the heart of white working-class alienation, which risks becoming a thematic undercurrent. Will my right hon. Friend set up a working group now to deal with that scourge, so that those peopleour peopleknow that they have not been forgotten, and that the miracle has not left them behind?

Tony Blair: As my hon. Friend has said, it is important that we tackle the remaining areas of unemployment in our country, and inner-city regeneration is one way of doing so. In our viewthis is a major point of difference with the Conservative partywe should expand and extend the new deal for the unemployed, rather than closing it down, which the Conservative party would do. If we want to tackle unemployment, the new deal for communities and the new deal for the unemployed should be deepened and strengthened and should not be cut back. I will certainly consider my hon. Friend's remarks in that context.

Angela Watkinson: Will the Prime Minister agree to discuss with his Secretary of State for Education and Skills the range of inspection grades available to Ofsted teams, which are currently outstanding, good, satisfactory and inadequate? In a recent inspection at the Sacred Heart of Mary girls' school in Upminster, which was very good overall, its achievement levels were described thus:
	no underachievement in any group
	and students achieve exceptionally well. The team did not seem able to describe that performance as outstanding, so it was described as good. Does the Prime Minister agree that there is a huge gulf between outstanding and good? Will he agree to discuss with his Secretary of State the introduction of an in-between grade of very good?

Tony Blair: I will certainly consider what the hon. Lady says, but she will probably understand that in the end it would not be wise for me or the Secretary of State to make those judgments; that has to be left to local inspectors. I am sure that the people in her local school of the Sacred Heart at Upminster do a superb job for their children, and I congratulate them on the strong showing that they made in the reportbut it is difficult for me to intervene in the way in which reports are written.

Barbara Keeley: Salford city council has been very effective in reducing antisocial behaviour through using antisocial behaviour orders, joint working, and the Together action line. However, we still have some problem families who can make other residents' lives a misery. Can my right hon. Friend tell me when we will be able to take forward the measures to insist on rehabilitation for people evicted as a result of antisocial behaviour, so that nuisance neighbours are helped to change their behaviour and not just moved around?

Tony Blair: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the problems of antisocial behaviour. As a result of the new powers, drug dealers' homes can be shut down and people can be evicted from them, and antisocial behaviour orders and dispersal orders have a real effect in many communities. However, we are looking to see how we can strengthen this still further. We particularly want to ensure that those who are evicted and then receive new tenancies do so under the strictest possible conditions and restraint, and that we have a system to ensure that where people move across different areas there is some sharing of the available information. Antisocial behaviour is still a huge issue for people in very many communities, but the new powers and resources are making a real difference where they are being applied. I make it clear again that if the police and local authorities want even further powers to deal with it, we shall give them those powers.

NHS Performance

Patricia Hewitt: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I wish to make a statement about the NHS chief executive's report and NHS finances for 2005-06.
	Sir Ian Carruthers, acting chief executive of the NHS, today publishes his first report on the performance of the NHS, including the provisional financial out-turn for the last financial year. A copy has been placed in the Library, together with a more detailed report on the finances from the Department's director of finance, Richard Douglas. This information also forms part of the Government's evidence to the Select Committee on Health, which is conducting an inquiry into these matters.
	I should like to begin by reminding the House of the context. Following decades of growth averaging around 3.1 per cent. a year, since 1997 the NHS has received annual average growth in funding of 6.4 per cent. The NHS budget, which has already doubled compared with 1997, will have trebled by 2008. That unprecedented investment has enabled the NHS to employ an additional 307,000 staff, including 85,000 more nurses. I am sure the whole House will want to express our thanks to all NHS staff for their outstanding dedication and hard work. With that investment has come reform, giving patients more choice for elective operations, using the independent sector to add to the capacity and innovation of the NHS, and establishing NHS foundation trusts with more freedom to respond to local people's needs.
	Sir Ian's report shows that NHS staff are continuing to improve patient care. Waiting times are continuing to fall. Virtually no-one now waits more than six months for an operation, compared with 270,000 patients who were waiting more than six months for an operation in 2000. The majority are treated much more quicklythe average wait for an operation is around just seven and a half weeks. There is now a maximum 13-week wait for an out-patient appointment. Again, the average wait is much shorter, with four out of five people getting their first out-patient appointment within eight weeks.
	Nearly 99 per cent. of people with cancer are treated within a maximum of 31 days of diagnosis, and more than 91 per cent. are treated within 62 days of an urgent referral from their GP, compared with only 75 per cent. one year ago. Early deaths from coronary heart disease, cancer and suicide continue to fall. Patient care is improving everywhere but some parts of the country face significant financial problems.
	The provisional unaudited figures for 2005-06 show a net overspend across the NHS, excluding foundation trusts, of 512 million. That is made up of a gross deficit of 1.27 billion, offset by surpluses of 765 million. Although we clearly cannot allow that position to continue, we also need to put it into perspective. The net deficit in the NHS is less than 1 per cent. of the NHS revenue budget and is concentrated in a minority of organisations.
	Seven out of 10 hospitals and other NHS organisations are not only improving patient care, employing more staff and paying them better than ever, but doing so within their budget. Two out of 10 have relatively small levels of overspending and only one in 10 NHS hospitals and other organisations account for more than two thirds of the overspending.
	My decision to publish those unaudited financial figures, together with the director of finance's report to me, reflects our commitment to greater transparency in the NHS. In future, we will publish quarterly reports on NHS finances.
	In the past, because the focus was largely on the overall financial position of the NHS, overspending organisations had little incentive to improve their performance but relied on other parts of the service to bail them out. The system was unfair because most of the overspending occurred in better-off areas with a generally healthier population and most of the underspending was in places with far greater health needs and health inequalities. We are not prepared to allow that unfairness to continue.
	By the end of the financial year, we will return the NHS as a whole to financial balance. The turnaround teams that I announced to the House in January are helping organisations with the biggest financial problems to implement recovery plans that will allow them to maintain and improve patient care within their budgets. As most of the NHS demonstrates, and Sir Ian confirms in his report, there should be no trade-off between improving patient care and sound financial management. They go together.
	We are aiming for all organisations with deficits to reach monthly balance of income and expenditure by the beginning of April next year. However, there will be some exceptional cases when an organisation needs longer to make the necessary changes while maintaining patient care. However, because overspending in one organisation has to be balanced by underspending elsewhere, we will continue to challenge and expect that minority of organisations to return to monthly balance as quickly as possible.
	We have also asked the new strategic health authorities to establish a regional reserve that will support organisations while they return to balance. That means asking primary care trusts that have stayed within their budget or delivered a surplus to contribute some of their growth money, which averages 9.2 per cent., in the current year and to postpone some of the improvements that they were planning to make for their patients. However, that money will not be lost to those communities. It will be repaid, normally in the three-year allocations period. I have stressed to the health authorities that the areas with the greatest health needs should be repaid first.
	There will be difficult decisions to make, especially in the minority of trusts with substantial deficits. In some cases, that will mean work force reductions and we all understand the anxiety and uncertainty that that causes for staff who have dedicated their lives to the NHS.
	However, there will not be the wholesale redundancies across the NHS that some commentators have forecast. In most cases, as Sir Ian stresses, work force reductions will be achieved by natural turnover, reduced spending on expensive agency staff, redeploying staff and freezing some posts. Compulsory redundancies will be kept to an absolute minimum and those affected will, of course, be given as much support as possible to find a new post.
	The NHS is treating more patients and saving more people's lives than ever before. Of course there is still more to do to meet the public's rising expectations, as people are living longer and a revolution is taking place in medical care and scientific knowledge. But Sir lan's report today shows that the NHS is on the right track, and I commend it to the House.

Andrew Lansley: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving me the opportunity to see her statement and the financial performance report 40 minutes ago. After her excursion into a parallel universe, it is about time we came back down to earth. She has come to the House today to admit that, for the fourth year in a row under this Government, the financial situation in the national health service is deteriorating, and that the deficit is a great deal larger than in the previous year. She says that there was a net deficit of 512 million in the last financial year. On a like-for-like basis, it was 216 million in the previous financial year, so it is now more than two and a half times greater.
	The Secretary of State's policy has failed, but of course it is the civil servants and the managers in the NHS who will get the blame. Trusts will be singled out and told that they are responsible for the deficit. Sir Nigel Crisp resigned in March. If everything was going so well in March, I wonder why the chief executive of the NHS had to leave in those circumstances. Since then, there has been an exodus from the Department of Health, with people either jumping or being ejected from the sinking ship. Many of them have rightly said that the NHS is suffering from the void of leadership in the rudderless Department of Health. The growing gap between the hard-working staff in the NHS and the leadership that ought to be coming from the Department of Health is causing a crisis of confidence.
	The Secretary of State's statement purported to give us financial information about the past year. She gave us the unaudited figures, and mentioned a sum of 512 million. Did she go on to tell us that the unaudited figures last year were out by 80 per cent. compared with the audited figures? The audited figures were 112 million higher than the unaudited figures. We do not yet know what this year's audited figures are going to be.
	The Secretary of State told us that the gross deficit was 1.27 billion. That is about 1.5 per cent. of the total NHS allocations. She then said that that was being offset by surpluses. Well, yes indeedthere are 760 million of surpluses. But she did not tell the House that more than 500 million of those surpluses have been generated by the strategic health authorities. That means that they have cut their budgets, and they are planning to do so again this year. Most of those cuts will involve training budgets, which will mean fewer posts for doctors and nurses coming into the profession seeking to pursue their vocation. If there is a 10 per cent. cut in training budgets this yearas postgraduate deans across the country expectthat will affect 4,000 training posts for doctors. In Stoke yesterday, a lecturer in nursing at Keele university told me that [ Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) must be quiet. It is not her function to sit there and heckle.

Andrew Lansley: That lecturer told me that 120 student nurses who are finishing her course at Keele university will not find jobs.
	Did the Secretary of State mention that deficit switching has led to cuts in mental health services that have been deplored by her own national clinical director? Actually, she did not say anything at all about mental health services. She talked about the reductions in waiting times, but did she mention the waiting times for diagnosis? Her own figures, to which she did not admit, now show that waiting timesincluding waits for diagnosiscan be up to four years for trauma and orthopaedics.
	Did the Secretary of State admit that, but for the strategic health authorities cutting their budgets, the deficits would be more than 1 billonprecisely the amount that we predicted last November? In December, the Secretary of State told the Health Committee that the deficit would be managed down to 200 million across the NHS by the end of the financial year. Actually, she said 250 million, but she had to be corrected by her officials because she did not have the figure in her head. However, the deficit has not been managed down to 200 million. It is now two and a half times greater than the figure to which the Secretary of State committed herself in front of the Select Committee.
	Did the Secretary of State come here with any apology? No, she did not. Did she come here with any clarification of what will happen this year? No. There may be a chief executive listening to this out there. Are chief executives required to achieve balance over the whole of the current financial year? We do not know. Are they required instead to achieve what the Department is now callingwe shall hear this term againrun-rate balance, which means balancing monthly income and expenditure in the last month of the financial year? That is a very different discipline. Perhaps they are expected to achieve such a balance; perhaps they are not. Are they required in all cases to recover earlier deficits? We simply do not know.
	The Secretary of State is promising that by the end of this financial year the NHS will have returned to financial balance. Will she tell the House that if by the end of this financial year the NHS is recording a further net system-wide deficit, she will resign?
	Yesterday the Prime Minister told the public service to speed up reform, but it is the mismanagement of reform that is holding the NHS back. Public servants want to deliver better services continuously, year by yearof course they dobut they cannot do that under a Government who have let them down. It is policy that is failing. It is not only consultants in the British Medical Association who are saying that. We have a Government who fail to allocate resources in line with the real burden of disease and demand across the country, with the result that some health economies are going into serious deficit.
	The Government grossly miscalculated the cost of new contracts, and failed to link those contracts to productivity or reform. They are spending billions on the NHS IT programme, but it is over two years late and is not delivering the system that the NHS wants. Last year the Government imposed central targetsthe Secretary of State did not mention themwhich cost hundreds of millions, distorted clinical priorities, and caused some of the deficits. The Secretary of State talked of 300,000 extra staff for the NHS, but she did not tell us that 106,000 of them were administrators. She has doubled the number of managers, and financial management in the NHS is clearly woefully lacking.
	This is a Government who have let the NHS down. Policy failures and mismanagement have left the NHS in serious and growing deficit. Hard-working front-line NHS staff deliver good, indeed excellent, care to patients, but they complain bitterlyand with justificationthat that is not because of the Government, but in spite of them. They want to be free of damaging interference by Labour Ministers.

Patricia Hewitt: I find it extraordinary that the hon. Gentleman made no mention at all of the dramatic improvements in care that have been delivered in the NHS over the past eight years and, indeed, the past 12 months. I am very surprised that he did not choose to mention that whereas in 1997 the number of patients in South Cambridgeshire who were waiting more than six months, in pain, for operations that they needed was 1,790, the figure in March 2006 was zero. It is extraordinary that the hon. Gentleman failed to mention improvements in his constituency and elsewhere, but I have to say [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Members on both sides of the House must pay attention to the Secretary of State's reply. We cannot have Opposition Front Benchers shouting across at the Secretary of State.

Patricia Hewitt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
	Not only did the hon. Gentleman fail to mention the improvements in care for patients; he was clearly very disappointed that the deficit was not higherthat it had not reached the levels that he had predicted. In fact, it is lower than the forecast figure that we published at the half-year point.
	The hon. Gentleman asked specifically about surpluses in the strategic health authorities. Many of those surpluses come directly from primary care trusts and other NHS trusts; but instead of being transferred directly to the accounts of overspending organisations, where in the past they have served to conceal the real problem of overspending, they have been held in strategic health authorities.
	The hon. Gentleman said that newly qualified nurses and other staff were finding it difficult to obtain jobs. Of course, with more staff in the NHS than ever before85,000 more nurses aloneit is more difficult for newly qualified nurses to find jobs than it was in the days when it was scarcely possible to find nurses to fill the vacancies that so desperately needed to be filled. What we are doing in response is ensuring that much more effort is made throughout the country to match our newly qualified staff to the vacancies that exist for every kind of staff in some parts of the NHS.
	Let me make it clear once again that I am determined that the NHS as a whole will be back in financial balance by the end of March next year. Of course, as Health Secretary I will be accountable to the House and the public for achieving that goal. We have said that we expect individual organisations to sort out their problems and achieve monthly financial balance as quickly as possible. A small number of themlargely those that have been overspending for several years and have large accumulated deficitswill not even be able to get to monthly financial balance by the end of next year. However, as I said, we will go on helping them to make the difficult but essential changes so that they get back into balance and deliver the best possible care within their budgets without expecting other parts of the NHS and other patients to bail them out.
	My final point is that the hon. Gentleman needs to decide whether he wants the NHS to deliver the best value possible for the moneythe increased money that he and Opposition Members voted againstthat the public have put in. Does he really think that poorer areas, which typically are those that have been underspending, should go on bailing out better-off areas that have been overspending? Does he agree with the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who wrote to the Prime Minister on 18 May asking for the deficit in Oxfordshireone of the overspendersto be wiped out? Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that in that area funding has risen by more than 38 million in the past three years? Does he recognise that it will increase again by more than 36 million in the next two years? Does he believe that south-west Oxfordshire, to take one example, which has 64 GPs per 100,000 population, should be given money from, for instance, Sedgefield, with 52 GPs per 100,000 population? Does he really believe that money should be taken from the poor to bail out the overspenders, or does he, like us, believe in fair funding across the NHS, and the best care and value for money everywhere?

Steve Webb: I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. Will she confirm that she just told the House that the NHS deficit has doubled in the past year? Will she confirm that one in three trusts are in deficit and that one in 10 are in serious deficit, which is more than last year? Will she confirm that the scale of the deficits is so much that the deficit trusts between them have run up a deficit in excess of 1 billion, which they will have to sort out, including paying back any assistance that they get from other trusts? The Secretary of State gave figures excluding foundation trusts. What are the figures including foundation trusts?
	Who is responsible for the financial crisis? If the Government set the pay rate for GPs, doctors and consultants, set Agenda for Change and NHS staff rates, set the tariff for how much trusts get and set all the targets, is it someone else's fault or is it the Government's fault if the sums do not add up? Will the Secretary of State take responsibility for the deficit in the NHS? How much of it is due to Department of Health mistakes, creating bodies that get abolished a few years later and negotiating contracts that result in overspendingthe GP contract and the consultant contract? Is that her fault or someone else's fault? Can we believe her when she says that the NHS will be in balance at the end of the year when Sir Nigel Crisp said in December that the deficit this year would only be 200 million and then, just a few months later, she told us that it would be two and a half times as big? Why should we believe her when she says that she will get the deficit under control this time around?
	The surpluses in the NHS are in different places to the deficits, so the gross deficit of 1.2 billion is huge. Is not it the case that it takes incredible mismanagement to spend record sums of money on the NHS and to come to the House admitting the worst deficits in years? How has the Secretary of State achieved that? How did she manage to do that?
	Is not it the case that what is going on is breakneck NHS reform, because the Prime Minister said that he will not go until the NHS is sorted out? How quickly will it be sorted out? Is not it the case that what we are getting is not measured organisational change, with long-term planning and rational reorganisation, but emergency cuts packages to deal with a short-term financial crisis? Does the Secretary of State accept that that is no way to run the NHS?

Patricia Hewitt: I have already given the specific answers to the questions that the hon. Gentleman asked initially. I have made it clear, and I shall make it clear again: seven out of 10 NHS organisations are in balance or delivering a surplus. Two out of 10 have a relatively small deficit, which is quite manageable. One out of 10 organisations, many of which have been overspending for several years, have serious financial problems. The financial figures for the foundation trusts were published earlier this week by Monitor. Their overall deficit is 24 million, making an overall deficit of 536 million, which is still significantly less than 1 per cent. of the overall NHS budget.
	If the cause of the deficits was pay rises for staff or targets for better care for patients, there would be deficits everywhere, and there are not. The majority of trusts in the NHS are employing more staff and paying them better, treating more patients faster than ever before, and saving more people's livesand they are doing it within their budgets. It is entirely reasonableI am surprised that the hon. Gentleman does not support thisto say that the NHS should be doing that everywhere.
	I am proud of the fact that we are paying our staff better than ever before. I am sure that they will note with interest that the Liberal Democrats are not so keen on that. It is perfectly true that the GP contract cost more than we and the British Medical Association initially anticipated. There is a very good reason for that: it is a performance-related contract and the GPs have delivered more and better care than we and the BMA expected. The additional costs in the GP contractssomewhat below 300 millionhave delivered better care for patients. Indeed, thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of that GP contract.
	I stressI tried to make this point earlierthat in the past the financial reporting systems within the NHS had the effect of concealing persistent overspending in a minority of organisations. In some cases, the underlying financial problems were wholly unclear even to the organisations themselves. We have stopped that. As a result of the changes and reforms that we are making, we have much greater transparency right across the NHS as we give patients more choice, as money follows the patients, and as hospitals, particularly foundation trusts, have greater freedom to respond to what patients need while taking responsibility for their performance and for delivering the best possible patient care within those increased budgets. In other words, our reforms are helping to reveal the problems and to deal with them, rather than causing them.
	As Health Secretary, I take responsibility for the NHS, for getting the policy framework right, and for ensuring that we have got the right support within the Department of Health to make sure that our front-line staff go on doing a superb job for patients. I regret that the hon. Gentleman, like the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), failed once again to acknowledge all the improvements taking place in the NHS for patients.

Kevin Barron: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the statistic that she just quotedthat seven out of 10 NHS organisations are improving patient care and employing more staff and paying them betterbelies the siren voices of both Opposition Front Benchers, and of the BMA consultants this morning? Would not they do better to find out why three in 10 organisations cannot do what the majority can do?

Patricia Hewitt: I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend and I know that he, in his capacity as Chair of the Health Committee and in the inquiry that he is undertaking, will help us to do exactly what is needed, which is to ensure that we deliver the best value and the best possible care for patients everywherewithin the enormously increased budgets that we have given to the NHS.

Peter Bottomley: Does the Secretary of State accept that it is not a surprise to anyone that every Member present wants a health service that is fair, effective and improving? She says that money will follow the patient, but will she look into what is happening in Worthingin my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton)where the hospital trust is expected to save 8 to 10 per cent. of its budget in-year, with an option of moving accident and emergency services far away from Worthing, which is the largest town in West Sussex? Would that be a case of moving the patients and the money following themor would it be better to bring the money to the patients and to let them be treated in their own town?

Patricia Hewitt: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will readily acknowledge that in his constituency, as everywhere else in the country, far more money than ever before is going into the NHS. I am not aware of the specific proposals for changes to the accident and emergency services to which he refers, but I will look into that and, if necessary, write to him with further information. I stress that such changes in NHS services have to be subject to full public consultation before decisions are taken and changes made.

Several hon. Members: rose

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is clear that a lot of hon. Members wish to respond to this statement. I therefore hope that they will limit their contribution to one question, perhaps followed by a short reply, so that more of them can be successful.

Chris Mole: Brokerage was clearly the drug to which the NHS should never have become addicted. Anyone who has run a large public organisation will recognise the need to drive out overspends on a continuing basis. Where trusts still have to recover debts and the financial recovery plans that protect patient services take perhaps two years, rather than one, to take effect, will the fund that the Secretary of State hopes that strategic health authorities will hold enable trustswhere such a fund is availableto deliver over the longer term, rather than the shorter term?

Patricia Hewitt: Yes, but as I stressed earlier we want that to happen only in exceptional cases and for the reason that I gave, which is that, where an organisation is taking longer to return to balance, another organisation will have to underspend and thereby postpone improvements that they want and need to make for their own patients.

Angela Watkinson: Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust is entering a year of great change, in which services and patients will have to be transferred from two old hospitals to one new one. That in itself is an enormous management challenge and has cost implications. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is almost too much to ask the trust to achieve that and to recover its budget deficit in one year? Will she seriously consider allowing the trust to recover its budget deficit over two years, or even three, in order to protect services to the public?

Patricia Hewitt: I am sure that the hon. Lady and her constituents will warmly welcome the new hospital and the far better facilities that it will offer patients. I have no doubt that the point that she makes is also being made by many hospitals that have been overspending. The chief executive and chair of her local hospital will of course be discussing this matter with the London strategic authority, which has a reserve power; it has the discretionbut only in exceptional circumstancesto allow longer for that recovery to take place.

Joan Walley: I appreciate my right hon. Friend's acknowledgement that some trusts and local health economies will have serious problems in coming to terms with the deficit. I ask her to continue to take a keen interest in our efforts to move the north Staffordshire health economy out of deficit, which will take longer than the time that the Government are allocating. Will she make sure that, in addition to the 60 million that has just been announced for the new building programme, we can get early closure in respect of the fit for the future project and an early decision on the North Staffordshire community hospital?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend has been assiduous in supporting staff and her constituents in the very difficult situation that North Staffordshire hospital faces. I will continue to stay closely involved as their hospital and health community are supported in returning to balance, and I am sure that she will wish to join me in thanking the new chief executive of the hospital, the primary care trust and the acting chairman of the hospital for the work that they are doing with front-line staff to ensure that difficult decisions are taken in a way that has the least possible impact on patients, and that any staff affected are given all the support that they need.

Michael Penning: Let me explain one of the reasons why there is such a problem with finances in West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which is in my constituency. Sedgefield, for instance, gets 1,210 per head, whereas last year in Hemel Hempstead, Dacorum primary care trust received 960 per head. There is a clear problem across the country in this regard. On Monday night, the health trust announced, in essence, the closure of Hemel Hempstead hospital, as it is facing 450 million-worth of debts. My constituents will be astonished at the complacent and patronising way in which the Secretary of State has addressed this problem. Their hospital, which was built for their community, is to close.

Patricia Hewitt: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the deficit and overspending problems not only in Hemel Hempstead but across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire are extremely serious. They have to be tackled, and there has been lengthy debate and full consultation on the changes that are needed in respect of different hospitals in that area. He talked about funding, but I should point out that in his constituency there are 65 general practitioners per 100,000 population, which is significantly more than the average and significantly more than in a constituency such as Sedgefield. I am sure that the entire House and the public will be interested to hear that what the hon. Gentleman is asking for is less money for areas such as Sedgefield, which have far greater health needs, and more money for his area. However, his area has already received enormous increases in its NHS budget, and, on average, it has a healthier and wealthier population than the areas from which he would seek to take money.

Dennis Skinner: I say to the Secretary of State on behalf of people such as me and Ronnie that age does not travel alone, and that we use the national health service. He has got a brand new kneeand he is proud of itand I have been in the cardiac and cancer wards and the rest, and, like Eartha Kitt, I am still here. I have got the national health service to thank for that.
	It is high time that there was some balance in this debate. If the Rover plant had had financial figures of the kind referred to today, it would still be open. If Peugeot had been able to produce the same results, its workers would still be at work, and if the National Coal Board had been able to produce those results, there would be 200 or 300 pits open today. The truth is that this is nothing other than a success story for people like me and the 30 others who had open-heart surgery. But the BBC, which joined with the Tories, refused to come to Brompton hospital and do a success story about the 30-odd people who had open-heart surgery and managed to survive.

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I certainly could not have put it better myself.

Edward Leigh: At 12.30 pm today, the National Audit Office published the summarised accounts for 2004-05. The Secretary of State has announced today an unaudited deficit for 2005-06 of 512 million. For foundation hospitals, that will rise to 536 million. However, if we look at the audited accounts for 2004-05, we see that the audited account deficit was almost twice as much as the unaudited deficit. In light of what has happened in the last year, what credence can we give to these figures, which are unaudited, and how much trust can we have in financial management in some parts of the NHS?

Patricia Hewitt: I made it clear that the figures are unaudited, but I thought it right to publish them for the House, as I undertook to do and as I did last year, rather than wait for the audited figures, which are some months away. The hon. Gentleman is quite right: last year saw a significant shift between the unaudited figures and the audited accounts. Obviously, we do not yet know what the audited accounts will show this year, but for several months the finance and turnaround teams have been crawling over the accounts of the organisations with the biggest financial problems, which has revealed problems that had not been acknowledged or discovered at the point of the mid-year accounts.
	The hon. Gentleman mentions the National Audit Office report, of which I have had early sight, and I am grateful to the NAO and the Audit Commission for their recognition that our reforms to bring about greater transparency in the NHS are helping to uncover, and therefore to tackle, some of the longstanding problems.

Chris Mullin: But it is true, is it not, that a major cause of some of the deficit is unfunded or underfunded centrally imposed initiatives or wage settlements? What is my right hon. Friend doing to take that into account for the future?

Patricia Hewitt: As I said earlier, I am proud of the fact that we are paying our staff more. Agenda for Change, in particular, has been a huge step forward, ensuring that we can guarantee our staff equal pay for work of equal value and reward them for taking on greater responsibilities. We have put more than 1 billion additional funding into the NHS simply to fund Agenda for Change. The great majority of NHS organisations are meeting those obligations, paying staff more and employing more staff, but doing so within their budgets, which we expect the rest of the NHS to do.

Andrew George: Is the Secretary of State aware that it has been announced today that Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trustit covers not a better-off area, but the poorest region in the UKhas an estimated deficit of 15.7 million, which is double what was announced only three months ago? Will the Secretary of State inform the House who is responsible for that? Is it the trust, which is appointed by her; is it the perpetual and expensive Government gimmicks endorsed by her Department; is it the funding formula that leaves Cornwall at the bottom of the earnings league table; or is it, in fact, the Secretary of State herself?

Patricia Hewitt: There are different specific reasons for the deficits that have arisen in a minority of organisationsthere is no single cause. If it were the targets or the pay rises, the deficits would arise everywhere, which is not the case. The Royal Cornwall hospital and the health community there must look into the same issues as other parts of the NHS are having to look into. For instance, are they doing enough day case surgery? Are they doing enough in the community to reduce the number of emergency admissions? Are they carrying out all the proven measures that are being used in other parts of the NHS to deliver better care to patients, with better value for money? The hon. Gentleman mentioned the funding formula, which we have made fairer. It now takes account of issues such as the demands of a rural economy, the proportion of elderly people living within the community and, above all, social and economic deprivation. That is why, over this year and the next, the poorest areas with the biggest health needs that are furthest from their target funding will get the biggest increases. I think that that is fair, and I regret the fact that the Opposition parties do not agree.

Andrew Gwynne: I welcome today's statement, not least because my own strategic health authority and two primary care trusts are in reasonable financial positions. However, can the Secretary of State guarantee that people in Denton and Reddish and elsewhere in Greater Manchesterareas with real health inequalities and real health needswill not lose out to other areas, often more prosperous, which have run up financial problems?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point, which is why I stressed to strategic health authorities that money contributed by primary care trusts such as my hon. Friend's to help manage the deficit in a different part of the north-west will be repaid, and it should be repaid to areas with the biggest health problems and the poorest populations before it is paid to others.

Richard Taylor: I gladly acknowledge the improvements, particularly in cancer and cardiac care, but I am completely puzzled by why morale is so low among NHS staff. Why are so many medical staff counting the days to retirement?

Patricia Hewitt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for acknowledging the superb work that is being done. He reflects the fact that an enormous amount of change is and has been going on in the NHS for some years, and of course that is enormously demanding for staff. The reason that change is continuing is, first, because it is working. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would, like me, welcome the fact that the latest survey of patients showed that 90 per cent. believed that their NHS care was good, very good or excellentthe highest-ever level of patient satisfaction. That places demands on staff and we have to continue to change within the NHS in order to meet all the challenges of which the hon. Gentleman is so well aware, including the need to release resources for the new drugs and treatments that are becoming available, which patients quite rightly want to receive as quickly as possible.

Hugh Bayley: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be unacceptable if deficits created a new postcode lottery whereby patients from one area had to wait longer for treatment than patients in a neighbouring area? Selby and York primary care trust has the worst deficit by far in the north of England. If it had been required to balance its books in a single year, it would have had to cut spending by more than 15 per cent., which would have had devastating consequences for patient care. I welcome my right hon. Friend's decision that some PCTs with the worst deficits will have longer than a single year to balance their books, but would she be prepared to meet me and senior health leaders from York and Selby to discuss the recovery strategy and reassure herself that she is not imposing conditions that would lead to an unacceptable postcode lottery?

Patricia Hewitt: Let me stress that our targetsthe six-month maximum wait, or for dramatically improved cancer careapply everywhere. We expect them to be achieved even in organisations with serious financial problems. Of course, I readily agree to meet my hon. Friend to discuss those matters in more detail.

George Young: I welcome the increased investment in the NHS, but is not the introduction of practice-based commissioning, payment by results, patient choice, the merger of the primary care trusts, the abolition of the strategic health authorities, the roll-out of foundation trusts and the introduction of a new IT system simply imposing too much change at the same time? The people trying to manage those changes are currently having to bid for their own jobs. Does not the NHS really need a period of stability and fewer initiatives from Whitehall?

Patricia Hewitt: When the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) recently announced, in my unavoidable absence, changes to the primary care trusts, they were widely welcomed. I know from my own city of Leicester that people have felt for some time that it was wrong and unnecessary to have two PCTs when one PCT, coterminous with social services, could do even better than the existing organisations. I believe that those changes were necessary. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned practice-based commissioning, and I am delighted that already a number of GP practices are signing up to it. That work will continue because it provides a way of ensuring that we can deliver better care more conveniently for patients and closer to home. We want to provide better care and better value for money as well.

Richard Burden: My right hon. Friend will be aware that South Birmingham primary care trust is one of the better-managed PCTs that has kept to budget and contributed to improvements in patient care. Indeed, some of the local hospitals, such as University hospital, also have a good financial record. Although they and I understand the logic behind the reserve and the fact that they will need to contribute to it, does she understand that they need some more reassurance that, while the much-needed improvements that they have planned may be delayed somewhat, they need to come on stream, so that their health needs and the needs of those communities, which are often uneven but nevertheless very severe, will be addressed and so that they will not have to wait an unreasonable time for that to happen?

Patricia Hewitt: I can certainly give my hon. Friend that reassurance. One of the reasons I am being so tough on the overspending organisations is that I am not prepared to allow the areas with the greatest health needs, such as his constituency, to go on bailing out overspending in areas that often have more NHS services than those poorer areas. I know that he and his constituents very much welcome the recent announcement that University Hospital Birmingham Trust will have a badly needed new hospital, which will enable it to go on improving the care that it offers to the people of Birmingham and the west midlands.

Shailesh Vara: By the Secretary of State's own admission, three out of 10 NHS organisations are in deficit. Although she tried to diminish the importance of that figure by making excuses, the reality is that 30 per cent. of NHS organisations are in deficit, the impact of which is felt by thousands and thousands of people who receive less treatment than they would otherwise. It is regrettable that the Secretary of State cannot bring herself to admit that failure under her stewardship, but it is worse still that she cannot bring herself to apologise to those thousands and thousands of people. I invite her to review the position and to consider apologising to the thousands of people who are suffering.

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman, whose party voted against the increased investment in the NHS, really ought to acknowledge the fact that thousands of patients who were waiting in pain for monthssometimes yearsfor operations under the Conservative Government are now being treated better and faster than ever before. It is high time that he acknowledged that and praised the NHS staff for those achievements.

Diana Johnson: What extra resources will my right hon. Friend provide to those areas, such as my constituency in Hull, whose PCTs are in balance and well managed, despite the huge health challenges that they face?

Patricia Hewitt: The extra funding that is going into the NHS this year and next year will be more than 9 per cent. of budget, and because of the fair funding that we are introducing, the areas with the greatest need will get the greatest funding increases. I know that that will be welcomed by my hon. Friend and her constituents.

Gregory Campbell: There has undoubtedly been a massive increase in expenditure on the NHS, but in some areas, particularly in Northern Ireland, substantial and significant problems remain. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government will undertake a comprehensive and radical review of NHS funding, along with many more preventive measures aimed at the higher risk groups in society?

Patricia Hewitt: The NHS in Northern Ireland is, of course, a devolved matter, but we have already undertaken a substantial review of NHS funding; the report of Sir Derek Wanless, in particular, made it clear that we have the fairest and the most efficient funding system in the world. Labour Members would certainly never want to depart from the basic values of the NHS: funding from general taxation and treatment based on clinical needs, not on ability to pay.

Bob Blizzard: The James Paget health care trust, which runs my local hospital, has no deficit. It has met and, indeed, exceeded all its waiting list targets and every other target that it has ever been asked to meet. That is why it is a well-managed, three-star hospital. Waveney primary care trust has a small but manageable deficit. We are delighted that we are about to be merged with Great Yarmouth PCT. I thank my right hon. Friend for that decision. The Great Yarmouth PCT has no deficit, but the strategic health authority is requiring it to loan about 3 million to other trusts. Will she guarantee that we will get that money back? Can we be in the first group of trusts to get it back, bearing in mind our levels of deprivation and health inequality?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a powerful case on behalf his constituents and his local NHS. The James Paget hospital has achieved some outstanding innovations in the organisation of its surgeries. That is one of the reasons why it is performing so well. He refers to the reserves and the contribution that his PCT is making towards them. Of course, as I indicated earlier, those in his health community will have the ability to spend restored to them. That will be done as quickly as possible, and I have made it clear to the SHA that the areas in the greatest need should get their money back first.

Phil Willis: My constituency has never had a higher level of health care than we have at present. That is partly due to the funding coming from the Government, but is mainly due to the dedication and professionalism of the staff. However, what would the Secretary of State advise me to tell my constituents who are seeing a ward closenot as the result of inefficiency; the hospital is run effectivelywhile the salaries of the foundation trust's chairman and board members are being doubled? Right across the country, every foundation trust's non-executive members' salaries will double. Sometimes, those people are earning more than 50,000. How can we justify sacking nurses and closing wards when we are paying unelected people those huge salaries? What added value do they bring to the system? Will she look radically at their work?

Patricia Hewitt: Board members' salaries are entirely a matter for foundation trusts. The hon. Gentleman's foundation trust, like others, will have local members and a local governance arrangement, and it is up to the members and the governing council to decide what those salaries should be. He refers to ward closures. There are many reasons why a hospital might want to reorganise wards. It might need and want to reduce the number of beds. For instance, if it is doing more day case surgery or if it is bringing people in for an operation on the morning that it takes place rather than the day before, that is better for patients, but it has the effect that fewer beds are required and therefore resources can be released for use on other improvements in care for other patients. I thought that he would welcome that, as well as the strong leadership that is provided by those on the good board of any well-performing organisation, rather than criticising them in the shallow way that he did.

Andrew Miller: I am fed up to the back teeth with siren voices talking down the NHS. I have a lot to thank the cardiothoracic centre in Broadgreen hospital and the Countess of Chester Hospital Foundation Trust for my health. I have been looking around at the fantastic work that has been done on GP referrals for cancer patients in my constituency. The figure is now up to 99.9 per cent.a fantastic result. Let us talk up the NHS. However, on the PCTs in my area, will my right hon. Friend ensure, as part of her commitment to the more disadvantaged areas, that there is no disproportionate slicing of resources from mental services in the recovery programmes?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the first point that he makes, and I can assure him that there will be no disproportionate impact on mental health services; they are being treated exactly the same as other services.

Greg Hands: Last week, the chief executive of my hospitals trust announced 150 sackings. Yet, only four years ago, the same chief executive told  The Daily Telegraph:
	The NHS is people-hungry. It needs skilled and qualified people and that is why we are scouring the world.
	Employment has gone up immeasurably in the past four years, only to have 150 sackings announced last week. Is that not a clear case of Labour's boom and bust in the NHS?

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman has fallen into precisely the trap that so much of the media have and that I warned against earlier: those are not sackings. [Hon. Members: Yes they are.] The hospital is making difficult but necessary decisions because it has a serious financial deficit and it is part of a broader health community in north-west London that accounts for a very large part of the deficit across the country, as he will see when he looks at the more detailed figures. Hammersmith hospital and the other hospitals in that part of London need to consider whether they are doing enough day-case surgery and organising their services in the best possible way, and they are already telling us that they can organise those services more effectively and continue to deliver patients very good care indeed.

Points of Order

John Bercow: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I should be grateful for your guidance on a point of order about the future of the Nuffield speech and language unit, which I raised with the Secretary of State on Tuesday 9 May and in which I declare an interest as the parent of a two-and-a-half-year-old boy who might in future require its services. I am not trying to make this point in a partisan way: I am simply anxious. The Secretary of State promised on 9 May to write to me directly, but has failed to do so, and I have still not heard from the Under-Secretary's office about the meeting promised to me. It is most unsatisfactory when Ministers make promises and then do not keep them.  [ Interruption. ]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I understand that the hon. Gentleman has raised this situation on more than one occasion. Ministers from the Department of Health are present and I am sure that they will have heard what he said. It is, of course, not a point of order for the Chair.

Charles Walker: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wrote a letter six weeks ago to the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Rosie Winterton) , asking for a meeting to bring local mental health charities to visit her to discuss cuts in my local mental health service. What can I do to secure a positive response and advance that meeting?

Madam Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order for the Chair, but the hon. Gentleman has made his point and Ministers from the Department of Health are present to hear it.

Fire Safety (Reduced Ignition Propensity in Cigarettes)

David Taylor: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to align cigarette manufacturing standards with international best practice so as to reduce the number of fires and fatalities in the home caused by cigarettes.
	This Bill would require that tobacco firms modify their cigarettes so that they have a reduced ignition propensity. Essentially, that means that such cigarettes go out if left without being drawn on for more than a few seconds. The House is of course well aware of the toll of premature death and disease caused by smoking. As a result of recent debates, if nothing else, we are also now well informed about the damage that breathing in other people's smoke can do to one's health. However, there is a third element of the misery caused by smoking that is perhaps less well understood, and that is the number of deaths and injuries from fires started by cigarettes. I commend the Fire Brigades Union and Action on Smoking and Health for the work they have done to highlight the continuing risks associated with smouldering cigarettes.
	Despite some success with stub it out campaigns, the number of tragic and avoidable deaths in such domestic fires has proved hard to drive down. The Government report Fire Statistics for the United Kingdom shows that in 2004, 3,500 fires in dwellings were caused by smoking materials, not including cigarette lighters and matches, and a further 1,600 in other buildings. Over the previous 10 years, the number of such fires totalled more than 60,000. Fires in dwellings caused in that way resulted in 114 deaths in 2004 and 1,260 non-fatal casualties. Smokers' materials are the most frequent source of ignition causing accidental dwelling fire deaths, accounting for around a third of such deaths every year. The vast majority of those fires were caused by manufactured cigarettes.
	The victims of those fires are more likely to be from low-income households and of course they include non-smokers as well as smokers, children as well as adults, and firefighters as well as members of the public, so this is no trivial matter. If the dry statistics are not enough, the human stories behind them are all too evident. For example, the  Edinburgh Evening News of 16 May this year reported on a fire that left a child aged less than 18 months with burns over almost half his body, requiring the amputation of two of his toes. It also left his family without a home. By great good fortune, and thanks to the presence of a smoke alarm, no lives were lost. Investigators believe that that fire, like so many others, was most likely to have been caused by smokers' materials.
	Tobacco manufacturers have long dismissed the link between cigarettes and fire deaths as merely a public perception, but for more than 20 years, as internal industry documents clearly show, the tobacco industry has known full well that many of those fires could be easily prevented. It argues that the introduction of cigarettes with a reduced propensity to ignite would lead to more negligent behaviour, but that is not a valid argument as the changes needed to the cigarette are slight and unlikely to be noticed by smokers. There are also many examples of safety standards being imposed on consumer products to protect public health without triggering dangerous or irrational behaviour, such as seatbelts and airbags in cars. If that argument were accepted, nothing would be accomplished by any attempt by the authorities to impose safety standards on consumer products. To avoid misleading descriptions, I suggest the use of the term reduced ignition propensityas used in Canadarather than fire safe or self-extinguishing.
	In January 2000, the tobacco firm Philip Morris introduced a reduced ignition propensity cigarette into the market, using small speed bands on special paper, which ensured that the cigarette rapidly went out if not actively smoked. In August 2000, New York state passed fire safety regulations requiring that all cigarettes sold there had to meet reduced ignition standards by June 2003. Early figures suggest that that may have reduced the number of fire deaths from smoking materials across the state by at least a third. Similar standards now apply in Canada, and the regulatory impact assessment there forecasts a reduction in the number of fires caused by manufactured cigarettes of up to two thirds. In the US, Illinois and Vermont have already followed the example of New York.
	In this country, a fire research report done for the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister estimated that, had cigarettes in the UK conformed to the highest standards in New York, the number of fires caused by cigarettes would have fallen by nearly two thirds. The ODPM figures suggest that that would have meant 78 fewer deaths in 2003 alone.
	Such standards could be introduced across the European Union, under the general product safety directive. Indeed, the European Commission is believed to favour such a move. Therefore, I hope very much that we can now discount early rumours that officials at the Department of Trade and Industry might not support further progress on this issue, when the relevant Committee meets in Brussels on 13 and 14 June next week. I understand and accept that the DTI rightly seeks to protect business from unnecessary regulation, but I do not accept that the bulging bank accounts of the tobacco industry really need such diligent defence by Government officials. Surely the experience of that child in Edinburgh and the thousands of other victims of fires caused by cigarettes merit a little consideration.
	If DTI officials are really so worried, let me reassure them that reduced ignition standards could be introduced at minimal cost to business and without threatening sales. Many of us may say in relation to cigarettes that that is not something to be given undue priority in any event. I hope that, now this matter has been drawn to the attention of Ministers, they will instruct their officials to take a more constructive approach. However, this House does not need to wait for the cumbersome processes of the European Union and the internal workings of Whitehall Departments to bear fruit. My Bill would require this simple and overdue measure to be introduced in the United Kingdom.
	Smoking is a lawful activity in a free society, but it brings with it terrible problems and it is surely our job as legislators to ensure that they are minimised as far as possible. In this case, we could introduce reduced ignition standards without affecting anyone's freedom to any significant extent. The number of fires would be reduced. The number of deaths and serious injuries in fires would fall too, and insurance costs would fall with them. The Department of Health would be assisted in its hugely important aim of reducing health inequalities. The Department of Communities and Local Government would be helped to meet its equally crucial public service agreement target of cutting the number of deaths from fires in the home by a fifth by 2010. And fewer young children like the Edinburgh toddler would be exposed to horrific accidents and injuries.
	In my own county of Leicestershire, a 55-year-old Anstey man would still be alive today if this Bill had been on the statute book, as would a 70-year-old woman from Fleckney. Residents in Thringstone and Ravenstone, wards that I have represented at various stages in my local government career, would not have had some serious fires occur in their homesso it is not surprising that the Bill is supported by firefighters who, all too often, have to risk their own safety to deal with fires caused by cigarettes. That is especially true for those in the Leicestershire fire service, whom I thank for their research into one element of the Bill.
	In short, everyone would gain from my Billand even the tobacco industry would barely notice its effect. The recent historic votes in this House on the Health Bill show that there is overwhelming support for action to reduce the burden of death and disease caused by smoking. We must disregard the rather odd conclusion reached yesterday by the Economic Affairs Committee in the other place, which suggested that we should have legislated to prevent passive smoking in the homehow on earth would we do that?instead of taking the historic step of eliminating it in workplaces and enclosed public spaces. I chair the all-party group on smoking and health, and I respectfully suggest that their lordships are somewhat detached from reality on this issue.
	I recently tabled early-day motion 2290, which draws attention to the hundreds of lives being lost in fires caused by smoking-related materials. I am gratified at the extent of support already shown by parliamentary colleagues for that motion.
	Where we cannot persuade people to quit smoking altogether, we canand mustact to reduce the harm caused by that habit and addiction. My Bill is a simple and overdue measure that is designed to achieve precisely that. I commend it to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by David Taylor, Norman Baker, Mr. Kevin Barron, Mr. Peter Bone, Colin Burgon, Mr. David Drew, Dr. Ian Gibson, Mr. Lindsay Hoyle, Helen Jones, Mr. Gordon Prentice, John Robertson and Bob Russell.

Fire Safety (reduced Ignition Propensity in Cigarettes)

David Taylor accordingly presented a Bill to align cigarette manufacturing standards with international best practice so as to reduce the number of fires and fatalities in the home caused by cigarettes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 20 October, and to be printed [Bill 192].

Opposition Day

Tax Credits

[Relevant document: The Sixth Report of the Treasury Committee, Session 2005-06, HC 811, on the Administration of Tax Credits .]

Madam Deputy Speaker: I must inform the House that Mr. Speaker has not chosen either of the amendments tabled to this motion.

George Osborne: I beg to move,
	That this House notes the overpayment, fraud and incompetence in the administration of the tax credit system; is concerned about the impact of this incompetence on the most vulnerable members of society; and calls upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the author of the tax credit policy, to explain to this House what measures are being undertaken to address these problems.
	The incompetent administration of tax credits touches the constituents of every Member of this House. This debate could not be more timely: last week, the Inland Revenue revealed that almost half of the 6 million people in receipt of tax credits were paid the wrong amount. That is a staggering level of error, and an increase on the previous year.
	I welcome to the debate the Chairman of the main Treasury Select Committee, and his counterpart on the Treasury Sub-Committee. The Treasury Committee, of course, is made up of Members from all parties. Yesterday, it published a report identifying Government error as a key cause of the overpayments. In its briefing for this debate, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux reminds us that, four years after the introduction of tax credits, it continues to see
	thousands of families who face hardship and genuine confusion as they have been told that they have been overpaid but given no explanation and no warning before payments are suddenly cut.
	Yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer still lacks the courage to defend a policy that he designed and implemented. We are told that he is at ECOFINthe first such meeting that he has attended since December. Two days ago, he was planning to send the Paymaster General. We know that because we have the list of the week's events produced by No. 10 Downing street. It clearly states:
	EU ECOFIN Council meets in Luxembourg  Paymaster General Dawn Primarolo attends.
	Then this debate was called and, for some reason, the Chancellor of the Exchequer changed his mind. Is it not strange how the right hon. Gentleman is always around to take the credit if things go well, but always happy to let others take the blame when things go wrong? Not once in the past year has he made a statement, taken part in a debate or even answered a question on tax credits. It is the policy that dares not speak its name, from a Chancellor who dares not open his mouth. Prime Ministers need many qualities, but political cowardice is not one of them.
	In the Chancellor's absence, we have the poor new Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He, at least, must know something about the chaos in the tax credits system as he happens to represent the constituency with the largest number of people who are overpaid and the largest number who are underpaid in the entire country. Half of all the hon. Gentleman's constituents in East Ham who claim tax credits receive the wrong amount from the Department that he helps to run.
	The Chief Secretary will undoubtedly tell us that the amount being overpaid across the country has fallen a little, to a mere 1.7 billion. When he does so, perhaps he will confirm that the number of people being overpaid has risen, with almost 3 million people getting the wrong award. When he tells us that help is going to the poorest families, will he also confirm that more than 100,000 of the poorest familiesthose on incomes of less than 5,000did not receive the level of support to which they were entitled? When he tells us about what he has called in the past couple of days the improved performance of the tax credits system, will he explain why the number of people in his constituency being overpaid has doubled in a year? Why did NACAB tell me yesterday that there was no sign of a reduction in the number of families contacting it?

Stephen Timms: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

George Osborne: In a moment.
	The tax credits system is a shambles. The Chief Secretary knows that, as does every MP in this House. The millions of people caught in the system's web know it, tooit is a shining monument to the incompetence of this Government. On that note, I give way to the Chief Secretary.

Stephen Timms: The hon. Gentleman referred to the report published yesterday by the Treasury Committee and to the remarks made in the introduction by the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Fallon), who said that tax credits were right in principle. Does he agree with that?

George Osborne: Yes, I believe that tax credits are right in principle, but I want a system that works. The present system does not work, and that is why we are having this debate.

John McFall: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

George Osborne: I am happy to give way to the right hon. Gentleman. I do not know whether he has checked the figures for his constituency produced by the Inland Revenue, but 5,200 people there received the wrong payment.

John McFall: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Treasury Committee is an all-party Committee, and that its report supported the principle of tax credits? The next question is, does he support a flexible system or a fixed system for tax credits?

John Bercow: My hon. Friend supports a system that works.

George Osborne: As my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) suggests, I support a tax credits system that works. Towards the end of my speech, I shall speak specifically about whether the system should be flexible or fixed. I note what the Treasury Committee report says about the variability of low incomes, and its request that the Chancellor keep an open mind about moving to a more fixed system.

David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman has said that his party supports tax credits in principle and that it wants a system that works. However, does he accept that the variability of low incomes is bound to mean that a substantial number of claims will have to be adjusted at the end of the financial year, under any system? I used to be an accountant, and I speak as one used to dealing with complex forms. Does the hon. Gentleman also agree that, to understand the statements that people receive, one needs a post-graduate qualification in encrypted Sanskrit?

George Osborne: The hon. Gentleman makes his point extremely well and I had better support his ten-minute Bill now.
	Today's debate should focus not just on the mistakes of the past, but the prospects for the future. I have four questions for the Chief Secretary to answer when he responds. They lie at the heart of whether the Chancellor's tax credit system, designed by the Economic Secretary, can ever be made to work in future. First, can the Chief Secretary confirm that the huge annual overpaymentsalmost 4 billion in two yearsare not the result of what the Paymaster General once dismissed as teething problems, but are now a permanent feature of the tax credit system? He admitted as much last week when he set out the latest emergency reforms to the way in which the credits operate. He saidthis is a striking statementthat once the changes are
	fully implemented, we expect them to reduce overpayments in future years by around one third.
	So, even if the reforms work as well as he hopeslet us face it, nothing else that the Government have promised on tax credits has workedtwo thirds of the overpayments will remain. Almost 2 million people a year will go on receiving the wrong tax credit payment and will face having the money clawed back off them, with all the hardship that we know that brings.

Sally Keeble: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

George Osborne: I am happy to give way because I have been checking on the figures in the hon. Lady's constituency. In Northampton, North, 1,800 people were underpaid and 3,800 people were overpaid. That is almost half of all the people in her constituency who received tax credits.

Sally Keeble: Yes, and quite a lot of them came to see me. I helped them with that, which has given me a good understanding of the tax credit system.  [ Interruption. ] It was a special surgery. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the reduction of one third would follow from the change in the income disregard, but that the other overpayments should also be reduced by the changes to the reporting requirements? That was another really important recommendation made in the pre-Budget report.

George Osborne: As I understand itthere is an opportunity for the Chief Secretary to clarify thisthe reduction of a third would occur if all the changes, both the reporting requirements and the increase in the disregard, were to take place. The increase in the earnings disregard simply reclassifies overpayments as disregarded income. That is one of the ways in which the Government are dealing with the problem.
	As I said, the Chief's Secretary's admission was extraordinary. As the Child Poverty Action Group reminded us last week:
	behind these figures are thousands of families struggling to survive when the overpayments are clawed back.
	Not that we need remindingwe see that every week in our constituency surgeries. A disabled young constituent of mine told me that she was
	at the point of despair
	because of the clawback of tax credits that were rightfully hers. The chairman of the Inland Revenue wrote to me about the case earlier this year. He said:
	I am sorry to say that when we processed your constituent's claim we missed including her new income details.
	How can one possibly miss including the income details when one processes a tax credit claim? That reveals a deep flaw in the system.
	The new changes announced by the Government include new obligations on claimants to fill in more forms and to file them more quicklyany bureaucracy's answer to any problem. Why do not the changes also include new obligations on the Treasury? The parliamentary ombudsman recommended a year ago that the Government introduce a statutory test for the recovery of overpayments that gives people a right to appeal to an independent tribunal when they think that the Revenue has got things wrong. That is the same test that exists for other benefits. The parliamentary ombudsman said that the test would
	strike the right balance between the obligations on the part of the administrators and those on the part of the recipients.
	NACAB says today that the test would
	build confidence in...the decisions being made.
	Why have the Government refused to introduce that statutory test? Why are they instead imposing new obligations on the recipients that are not matched by new obligations on the administrators?

John Bercow: Surely the impenetrable complexity of the system is such that it is understood only by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if at all. Is it not distinctly shameful for him to have devised a system that is even more complicated than the Schleswig-Holstein question? At least three people understood thateven if one of them went mad, the second died and the third forgot what the answer to the question was.

George Osborne: Believe it or not, I studied the Schleswig-Holstein question at university, but I am not going to go into it. My hon. Friend makes a telling point. It is a remarkable achievement of the Chancellor that he has made the tax affairs of the poorest almost as complex as the tax affairs of the richest.

Michael Weir: I was interested in what the hon. Gentleman said about the new forms. What good is there in changing forms if part of the problem is that the information does not seem to get on to the computer system in the first place? The people who return forms still end up with overpayments or the wrong payments because the information goes missing, does not get put on to the computer or the computer seems unable to recognise it.

George Osborne: That is one of the rare issues on which I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
	The other question for the Government on overpayments is, why have they not implemented their own promise last year to pause before proceeding to recover an overpayment so that they can work out whether it is the Revenue that has made the mistake? Again, the parliamentary ombudsman recommended that approach. So, too, did NACAB. The Select Committee said in its report yesterday that that was
	crucial, in the interests of natural justice.
	However, the Committee also said that it feared that the Government promise had been sidelined. Why have the Government reneged on that promise? Perhaps the Chief Secretary can explain.
	If multi-billion pound overpayments affecting millions of people are to be an annual feature of the tax credit system, the Government need to implement the changes needed to protect the rights of our most vulnerable families. That brings me to the second questionwhen will the ongoing fiasco of the computer system be resolved? Again, I recently dealt with a case in my constituency of a single parent who repeatedly tried to tell the Inland Revenue that she was being overpaid. She was ignored for months, only for her tax credits suddenly to be suspended altogether two weeks before Christmas. She wrote to me to say that she could not buy her two young children presents because she was struggling to provide them with even the basics. A month later, after Christmas, the Revenue wrote to me admitting that it had got the case wrong because of
	a technical fault we are experiencing with our computer.
	That was this year. That was the same computer that the Paymaster General told the House a year ago was stable and performing...well. Does the Chief Secretary still think that the computer is stable and performing well? Will he repeat that phrase when he gets up to speak?
	The Government amendment says that the IT problems affected only
	the early stages of implementation.
	If Ministers really think that that is the case, I am afraid that they are living in a fantasy world. Certainly the Select Committee does not agree. It says in its report that IT error remains a significant cause of the tax credit mistakes. Do Ministers not realise what is going on in their own Department? The report goes on to talk about the Paymaster General's evidence. It states:
	The factors cited by the Paymaster General...as contributing to the problem of overpayments do not appear to give us a comprehensive account of the reasons why overpayments have arisen.
	It continues:
	It is obvious to us that the Paymaster General's account makes no reference to causes which have arisen as a consequence of the Department's own processesfor example official error and IT error.

Jeremy Wright: Does my hon. Friend agree that the position on information technology is even worse than he has set out? Is he aware that in my constituency I have a case in which a lady was overpaid repeatedly? She told the authority that that was happening and the reply was, Yes, we know, but the computer won't let us put it right.

George Osborne: It is an extraordinary exampleone of many. I suspect that every Member could produce similar examples of computer errors.
	The Government finally sacked EDS, the company that provided the computer, and announced triumphantly that the company would pay them compensation. However, as yesterday's Select Committee report shows, the deal done by Ministers means thatthis is truly incrediblefull compensation is paid only if EDS wins other Government contracts. In short, the company that Ministers believe is guilty of messing up the tax credit computer will pay full compensation to taxpayers only if it is given a chance to mess up another Government computer system. Only this Government could negotiate such an incompetent deal, and now they refuse to discuss the details of the deal on the ground of commercial confidentiality. The Select Committee is rightMinisters should be accountable for the mistakes that they make and subject to parliamentary scrutiny on the arrangements into which they enter on our behalf, instead of hiding behind commercial contracts.
	Of course, it is not only the computer that has cost the taxpayer millions of pounds, but fraud, which brings me to my third questionwhat is the true cost of tax credit fraud and what are the Government doing to tackle it? The Government refuse to tell us the true extent of tax credit fraud. According to the Paymaster General, there have been
	persistent attempts by organised criminals to obtain tax credits by using stolen or fictitious identities.
	We know that the Government had to abandon their online application system six months ago after systematic abuse. We know, too, that although Ministers say that they are acting tough, there were just 211 prosecutions for tax credit fraud, with only two for organised tax credit fraud, out of 6.5 million applications. However, we do not know when Ministers knew for the first time that systematic fraud was taking place or how much money has been lost. Does the figure run into hundreds of millions of pounds, or even billions?
	Ministers were warned about the possibility of fraud before the tax credit system was introduced. Why did the Chancellor ignore the series of security checks that was proposed by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) when he was Minister for welfare reform? The right hon. Gentleman said earlier this year:
	After I resigned ... the counter-fraud measures were not carried out and now it shows in the figures.
	Why were those counter-fraud measures not carried out?
	What about stopping fraud in the future? Surely the Select Committee is right when it warns that increasing the earnings disregard to 25,000 creates an incentive for further fraud as people deliberately fluctuate their incomes from year to year, but the Government have done nothing to prevent that from happening. Will the Chief Secretary address that problem today, too?
	The Paymaster General promised the House that the Treasury would provide
	more comprehensive information on the level of claimant error and fraud ... in spring 2006.[ Official Report, 10 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 551W.]
	I know that winter has descended early on the Labour party and it is getting its seasons muddled up, but it is now June. Where is the information that we were promised for the spring?
	For the second year running, ministerial incompetence and computer chaos have caused hardship for hundreds of thousands of people and cost the taxpayer billions of pounds, so I ask my final questionis it not time that the Government looked at the design of the tax credit system? The Government say that money has got to the poorest, but after spending more than 15 billion a year, it would be extraordinary if it had not. However, that comes at a price. In the words of the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), a great friend of the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, in the Budget debate in the House:
	poverty has become more entrenched.
	The right hon. Gentleman said:
	the number facing marginal tax rates of 60 per cent. or more has increased by nearly 1 million, largely as a consequence of the workings of the tax credit system.

Adrian Bailey: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

George Osborne: I am happy to give way. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman agrees with the right hon. Member for Darlington.

Adrian Bailey: I do not, and my constituency is West Bromwich, West, if the hon. Gentleman wants to tell me how many overpayments there have been in my constituency. Something like 8,000 families in my constituency are benefiting from tax credits, but over the past three years, just 37 people have come to my surgery with tax credit problems. Will the hon. Gentleman tell us what comparable reforms he would introduce that would allow families with children on an average income to be 1,500 a year better off, with those who are poorest being 3,500 a year better off? That is the true nature of the issues about which he is talking.

George Osborne: As the hon. Gentleman does not know what is going on in his constituency, I can tell him that 3,600 people there were overpaid. He will have to ask them why they did not feel that it was worth their time to go to his constituency surgery.
	The right hon. Member for Darlington told us that the tax credit had left us with an
	80-20 society, in which 80 per cent. do OK but 20 per cent. are left behind. [ Official Report, 28 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 710-11.]
	 [Interruption.] It is no good Members saying that he was wrong. Did the hon. Member for Dudley, North (Mr. Austin) say that?

Ian Austin: indicated assent.

George Osborne: There we go. The hon. Gentleman is one of the Chancellor's henchmen and a proponent of what was called the Kill Mil operation. No doubt he is getting to work on the Education Secretary as we speak.
	The right hon. Member for Darlington is not the only person who has criticised the operation of tax credits. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition pointed out during Prime Minister's questions, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead has said:
	using tax credits as an anti-poverty weapon is like attempting keyhole surgery with a hacksaw.
	That is Labour's verdict on Labour's record.
	At question is not the existence of tax creditswe support tax credits, but want tax credits that workbut the system that the Chancellor chose of annual awards, annual income assessments, annual overpayments and annual clawbacks. That system means that almost half of all families get the wrong tax credit payment.
	Perhaps the Economic Secretary to the Treasury has not even read the parliamentary ombudsman's report, but if he did, he would see that she says that there is
	the fundamental question as to whether, for people on modest incomes who have to budget and plan their finances carefully to manage their lives, such inbuilt instability or uncertainty really works.
	The Treasury Committee, in its first and perhaps most important recommendation, points to the new evidence that shows that the family incomes of many of the poorest have become more variable and unstable as a result of tax credits. That all-party Committee asks the Chancellor to consider fixing awards over shorter periods than a year, and I ask him again to do so. The time has come to give serious consideration to moving to a tax credit system that is based on shorter, more fixed payments, that brings greater certainty to family incomes and that avoids the hardship of overpayment.

Jim Devine: It is great to hear the hon. Gentleman giving advice, but in his interview in last month's edition of  Magill, the well-respected Irish magazine, he said:
	anyone who says that I haven't known adversity hasn't looked at my CVI worked for John Major when we lost the 1997 election.
	He then said that he worked for the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) when the Conservatives lost in 2001. He went on to say:
	That doesn't say much for the quality of my advice
	so why should we listen to him now?

George Osborne: An absolutely devastating intervention. I should refer the hon. Gentleman to the figures on awards in Livingstone, which has pretty much the worst record on errors of anywhere in the country outside East Ham and West Ham. If he wants to toddle off and look at the figures, he can do so.
	Examining the design of the tax credit system does not mean scrapping tax credits, but trying to make them work. In a rare admission of error, the Chancellor, too, opened up that possibility at the end of last year when he said that the Government might have to examine fixed payments. However, I doubt that he will do that considering that he designed the flawed system and has presided over its incompetent administration. Today's tax credit system is his creation and no one else's [Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Could we have just one debate in the Chamber with one speaker?

George Osborne: Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	The Chancellor remains stuck in the past. He is refusing to listen and is the road block to reform. He is too proud to admit that he has got it wrong and too lacking in courage to defend the system in public. It will be up to the next Government to fix the broken tax credit system and give millions of lower-income people the social justice that they deserve.

Stephen Timms: Today's debate gives us the welcome opportunity to reflect immediately on yesterday's report from the Treasury Committee on the administration of tax credits. We will, of course, respond to the report in full in due course. In the mean time, I welcome it as a constructive contribution to the debate, and I hope that it offers the prospect of a new consensus throughout the House on the advantages of the tax credit system.
	The hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) said, in introducing the report, that tax credits are right in principle. I agree. The report rightly drew attention to the wide support among non-Government organisations, such as Citizens Advice, for the tax credit system. It underlined the importance of improving the quality of service provided to tax credit claimants. I agree about that as well.
	It is a shame that the speech of the hon. Gentleman did not reflect very much of the now broad agreement on the gains from the tax credit system. He told us that he agreed that tax credits are right in principle, but he did not tell us very much about his agreement. It seemed that he was much more anxious to voice his criticism of the system than to explain why he now supports it.
	I remind the House why there is broad agreement about the gains from the tax credit system. Let us consider the progress that we have made since 1997.

Andrew MacKay: Before the Minister goes any further, will he clarify exactly why the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not reply to the debate? At what point did he decide to go to the ECOFIN meeting? Why, according to the website earlier this week, was the Paymaster General attending?

Stephen Timms: The right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that my right hon. Friend is defending our national economic interests in Brussels today, as he has done extremely effectively over the past nine years. I think that the right hon. Gentleman will find that reassuring. As for the way in which we are handling the debate, it is precisely the way in which these debates have been handled in the past.
	I remind the House of the changes that have occurred since 1997.

Shailesh Vara: Will the Minister give way?

Stephen Timms: No. I will make some progress and then I will gladly give way to those who want to intervene.
	Since 1997, there are now over 2 million more people in work, thanks in large part to the tax credit system. In 1997, just 800,000 people received family credit. Today, 6 million people benefit from tax credits. Ninety three per cent. of families on incomes below 10,000 claim their entitlement to child tax credit compared to the initial family credit take-up of just 57 per cent. under the Tories. In 1997-98, fewer than 2.5 million families with children paid no net tax. Under today's tax credit system, there are now 3 million families in that position.
	Three enormous gains have been achieved from the introduction of the tax credit system, which is what it was designed to deliver, and which it is succeeding in delivering.

Charles Walker: Undoubtedly the tax credit system has helped many people, but there are many families that suffer huge distress when they receive claims for large sums that they have no means of paying. How is the Minister proposing to reduce this distress on hard-working families who do not deserve to be treated in that way?

Stephen Timms: I shall set out the progress that we are making on that, because I think that it will be acknowledged that it has led to considerable improvements. Before I do so, I am grateful for acknowledgement of the benefits of the system, which I shall set out. First, tax credits have significantly improved incentives to work. In the past, far too many people found that they were better off on benefits than in a job. Tax credits have put that right. That is one of the reasons why so many more people are now in work and why the historic high rate of employment that we have achieved has been maintained for so long. Secondly, the tax credit system has reduced the tax burden on low to middle-income families. An OECD study, published in March, showed that, thanks to tax credits, net tax paid by a couple with one child living on the average manufacturing wage has fallen from more than 17 per cent. in 1997 to less than 10 per cent. now. That is a dramatic reduction in the tax burden for people who are benefiting greatly from the improvements that have been introduced.

Philip Hollobone: I shall read briefly the comments recently of one of my constituents in response to a letter from the Tax Credit Office. My constituent writes:
	I should like to point out that although initially the tax credit payments proved very useful, the situation created by your overpayment has caused me substantial hardship and increased stress. In fact, I wish that I had never applied in the first instance. I feel very let down by the system.

Stephen Timms: I shall describe to the House the improvements that we have made. It is particularly interesting to note that take-up of tax credits has continued to rise.
	The most recent figures and data have confirmed that the third big gain has been that tax credits have helped to achieve a big reduction in child povertysince 1997, the number of children growing up in poverty has fallen by 700,000. That is consistent with our aim of halving child poverty by 2010 and abolishing it by 2020. Tax credits have made a big contribution to that success.
	Of course, there have been problems with administration and with IT. It is right that the House should press for those problems to be fixed, and I want to report progress on that. I hope that the debate will reflect a new agreement across the House that tax credits are right in principle and that the focus now needs to be on how we can make the system more effective still. Conservative Members now say that they agree with that, and that is progress, but that is not reflected in the detail of their contributions to the debate. Tax credits are playing a key role in moving people into work, helping people move up the employment ladder while in work and ensuring that it pays to be in a job.

Jim Cunningham: I am sure that my right hon. Friend recalls that when the Opposition were in Government they opposed tax credits. They opposed the proposal all the way down the line. Does my hon. Friend recall also who it was who introduced the Horizon project that cost billions and cost nearly 50 million to put right? The shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer did not talk about that. I wonder whether he had a hand in that when he was an adviser in John Major's Government.

Stephen Timms: The Conservative party was responsible for that. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the Conservative party consistently opposed tax credits and consistently opposed the dramatic improvements that we have seen in work incentives, reductions in tax burdens and reductions in child poverty.
	I will say a little more about those three key improvements. Tax credits have improved incentives to work. Together with our wider economic stability, they have helped to increase the number of people in work by more than 2 million since the spring of 1997. Since then, long-term unemployment has reduced by 450,000. For example, from this October, a couple with two children moving into full-time work on the national minimum wage will be 41 a week better off for having done so. A lone parent with two children moving into full-time work on the national minimum wage will be 76 a week better off compared with the 54 that that person would have received under the system as it was in 1997. A single person without children moving into full-time work on the national minimum wage will be 58 a week better off compared with the 39 that they would have received under the system as it was in 1997. There have been substantial improvements in the incentives to move into work, and they are one of the main reasons why we have seen such a big increase in the employment rate.

Shailesh Vara: The Minister is keen to emphasise the positive aspects of the system. Will he concede, bearing in mind some of the recipients of tax credit are the poorest in the land and some of the most vulnerable, that he and the system are doing such people no favours by increasing bureaucracy and the responsibility on them to make claims without there being a similar impact on the administrators?

Stephen Timms: There is a big impact on precisely the people to whom the hon. Gentleman refers, and that is for the good. For example, the tax credit system has reduced substantially the tax burden on low to middle-income families, precisely those to which he refers. That tax take of 9.8 per cent. on a single earner couple on 21,000, with two childrenthe manufacturing average wageis now, according to OECD studies, the lowest rate of any country in the G7. There has been a huge gain for middle and low-income families. The single earner family with two children can now earn just under two thirds of the average wage before they start to pay any net tax. Thanks to tax credits, the number of families with children paying no net tax will have risen by more than 500,000 to more than 3 million this year. Those improvements should attract wide support from across the House.

John McFall: I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks on the constructive but critical report of the Treasury Committee. It says clearly that tax credits are right in principle. The core issue is whether we want a flexible system or a fixed system. I would wish to take up that issue if I were to catch the eye of the occupant of the Chair. I have not had a response from the shadow Chief Secretary about the core issue. Where are the Opposition going? Are they fixed or flexible? Will my hon. Friend address that core issue.

Stephen Timms: If I understood him correctly, the shadow Chancellor wants a more flexible inflexible system. However, I look forward to the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall), as I agree that this is a very important point indeed.
	The third big gain from the system is the fact that tax credits have helped to achieve a significant reduction in child poverty700,000 children have been lifted out of relative poverty since 1997, compared with a doubling of child poverty in the previous 20 years under the Tory Government. There is recognition across the House that child poverty must be tackled. Previously, the Opposition did not acknowledge that, but they do so today, which is another reason for the broad agreement that, as the Treasury Committee said, the tax credit system is right in principle. Tax credits provide support for 20 million peoplea third of the populationand assist 6 million families and just over 10 million children. Take-up is substantially higher than in any previous system of income-related financial support for families in work, and it has risen much faster than it did under previous benefit systems such as family credit. The people most likely to take up their entitlement are the low-income families who stand to benefit the most.

Anne Milton: The Chief Secretary is talking about statistics, but we are talking about individuals. For anyone listening to our debate, it is individuals who matter. In my Guildford constituency, it is a story of telephone calls that are not answered or returned. Recently, the worst case with which I dealt was one in which someone received an overpayment of 9,000 that they were asked to repay in monthly instalments of 600, which is far beyond their means. Until the Chief Secretary and the Government accept that the problem affects individuals and until they stop citing facts and statistics, we will not make any progress. I should like to ask the Chief Secretary

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady has made her point.

Stephen Timms: I am afraid, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I shall continue to cite facts. Individuals are better off in work, instead of being on benefits, as they were in the past. Individuals have a lower tax burden, thanks to the tax credit system, and 700,000 individual children are not growing up in poverty, although they would have done so under the system administered by the Opposition.

Adrian Bailey: We should talk about individuals. Individuals whom I have met on the doorstep say that tax credit has transformed their personal financial circumstances. If Opposition Members were completely honest, they would have to include that in the equation. However, does my hon. Friend agree that an obvious overpayment factor was built into the system? In itself, that should not mean that a family suffers hardship when their income increases and they have to repay it but, in a small minority of cases, the calculations are wrong, resulting in difficult circumstances. Furthermore, does my hon. Friend not agree that the alternative is a fixed, inflexible system that penalises people far more?

Stephen Timms: My hon. Friend is right on both points. Yesterday, the Treasury Committee made the point that its witnesses have not called for a return to a less flexible system, although some hon. Members have done so.
	The statistics published at the end of last month showed continued growth in the number of tax credit recipients. The total number of families who benefit from tax credit rose to 5.9 million in 2004-05, and 305,000 families have benefited from the child care element alonea 14 per cent. increase on the previous year. A total of 79,000 families benefit from the disabled worker element, which represents an increase of 23 per cent. on 2003-04. Tax credits, as my hon. Friend rightly said, make a vital contribution to the well-being of hard-working families in Britain today. As the Treasury Committee said yesterday, they are right in principle. The challenge is to make sure that the administrative problems that have been raised in our debate are put right.

David Laws: So that we can move on to the substance of the debate, can the Chief Secretary tell us how many recommendations made a year ago by the ombudsman have been implemented?

Stephen Timms: We responded positively to the ombudsman's report, and we have not rejected any of its recommendations. The hon. Gentleman will have seen our response, as it has been published.
	A good deal of the debate concerns end-of-year adjustments, which were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey). Let me make the position clear: as family circumstances change, we must reflect those changes in the tax credits that are paid, which is why end-of-year adjustments are integral to a flexible system that responds to people's changing needs. For example, if a couple have a second child or if they suffer a sudden drop in income, the tax credit system should be able respond with extra help straight away. That is the great strength of the flexible system that has been set up, and such a response is only possible if payments can be adjusted during the year and, where necessary, at the end of the year, once any changes in income are known.

George Osborne: The Treasury Committee said in its final recommendation:
	We note the Chancellor of the Exchequer's indication that he is keeping an open mind on the possibility of returning to a regime of fixed awards in which entitlement is based on the previous year's income.
	Will the Chief Secretary confirm that that is the case?

Stephen Timms: The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), in particular, has called for the introduction of a system based on income in a previous period. He is right that the need for adjustments would be removed if we did so, but he and the House must acknowledge the price that would be paid is a loss of flexibility. Interestingly, the report published yesterday included a suggestion, based on work by the Economic and Social Research Council centre for analysis of social exclusion, that, if anything, the system should be more flexible in future.

George Osborne: The Chief Secretary told us the views of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws), but I asked for the views of the Chancellor of the Exchequer who, we are told,
	is keeping an open mind on the possibility of returning to a regime of fixed awards.
	Is that the case?

Stephen Timms: We certainly keep the system under review, but its flexibility is a source of enormous strength and benefit. It can respond straight away to changes in people's circumstances, which is a huge gain.

Michael Weir: I agree that flexibility is essential to the system, but if my constituents try to provide information to officers, it is often not entered into the system or is not entered correctly so it cannot be found if there is a problem. This week, I received a letter from Revenue and Customs saying that it could not retrieve information from the system to tell me whether my constituent had been overpaid, underpaid or paid the correct amount. My constituent is beside herself with worrythere is a problem in the system, as it cannot deal with flexibility.

Stephen Timms: I was pleased to discuss the improvements that we have made in a recent Adjournment debate, when the hon. Gentleman raised his concerns. Procedures are in place to minimise hardship, including reduced recovery rates from continuing tax credit payments for people on low incomes. For people who no longer receive an award, there are 12-month instalment plans, with longer repayments where necessary. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs considers the case for making additional payments to people who claim hardship as a result of recovery. My right hon. Friend the Paymaster General listened to representations last year about the balance between certainty and flexibility, and responded with changes that reflected those representations.
	We do need to improve the quality of service to tax credit customers, as the Treasury Committee stated. That is why we have introduced a series of changes building on experience from the first couple of years of the system. I am grateful, again, to the Treasury Committee for its acknowledgement yesterday:
	We welcome the close attention that the Government continues to pay to improving the design of the regime.

John McFall: On the point made by the shadow Chancelloryes, the Chancellor is keeping an open mind, but I have tried to impress upon the Chancellor and other members of the Front-Bench team that if we go back to a fixed system, we can be sure that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) said, there will be many, many more complaints from our constituents. The question is flexible or fixed, and I am looking for an answer from the shadow Chancellor. We must be sure that a flexible system works. That is why we need to keep an eye on it.

Stephen Timms: That is why the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman's predecessor said that
	when people's circumstances change to their detriment, we want a substantial response.[ Official Report, 10 December 2001; Vol. 376, c. 625.]
	The Liberal Democrats had previously favoured flexibility. My right hon. Friend is right about the benefits of that.

George Mudie: As a member of the Select Committee, I appreciate the open mind that my hon. Friend is bringing to the problems that were thrown up. They are not easy problems to resolve, but the fact that they are accepted and that work is going on is welcomed. However, seeing the problems should not distract us from the effect that tax credits have had on our estates. I have seen so many young people waste away on benefits, particularly single parents, who should be in a job but whose lack of skills means that their first job will be a low-paid one, which does not make it worth their while coming off benefits. Tax creditsmy hon. Friend mentioned the figure of 50 to 76 a weekhave provided the incentive for so many people on my estate to take up work, enter society and be a stakeholder for the first time.

Stephen Timms: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The dramatic improvement to the incentives to get into a job have been a big gain from the system. I am grateful to him for drawing the attention of the House to the gains in his constituency, and I pay tribute to his work on behalf of his constituents in that respect. That is why the Select Committee said yesterday that we could not go further on certainty without putting flexibility at risk. That was an interesting conclusion, which the House will want to reflect on.
	My right hon. Friend announced some important policy changes last November, in particular to address the impact of the annual income rises that have led to the need for adjustment and an increase in the tax credits disregard from 2,500 to 25,000. That crucial change has taken effect from April this year. Together with other changes, those policies will minimise the need for adjustments, yet maintain the flexibility to respond to changes in circumstances.

Greg Clark: On the increased disregard, can the Chief Secretary say what estimates his officials gave Ministers of the cost of that policy change?

Stephen Timms: The overall impact of the package is broadly neutral in cost terms. When one considers the elements of it that cost money and those that gain revenue, the overall impact is broadly neutral.
	In our modern labour market, where in any year 3 million people change jobs, flexibility to respond is tremendously important. That is the big benefit of the system as it has been constructed. I welcome the Treasury Committee's comments about that.
	Our strategy is to make work pay and to provide real financial support to families through tax credits. There have been problems in the early stages of implementation, but there have also been vital gains. That is why there is growing recognitionacross the House, I hopethat tax credits are right in principle.

George Osborne: I am grateful to the Chief Secretary for giving way again. I sense that he is winding up. Will he deal with two specific points, which I know the Select Committee considered and Citizens Advice is concerned about? One is the statutory test and the right to appeal to an independent tribunal, which exists for other benefits. The second is the pause that the Government promised before the clawback of overpayments, to give people the right to question the Treasury's decision on that.

Stephen Timms: On the first point, the procedure as we now have it is consistent between the tax credit system and the benefits system as regards the handling of official error. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have just come from the Department for Work and Pensions, and there is consistency now between those two. On the pause, we have said that we want to accept the ombudsman's recommendation. I can reaffirm that today. Some IT changes will be needed to achieve that, and they may take a little time. We want to take the time, to make sure we get it right. It is our intention to proceed with that, as we have said.
	Better incentives for work, a lower tax take from families on low and middle incomes, a big reduction in the number of children growing up in povertythe system is right not just in principle, but increasingly in practice as well. It is the right system for a progressive welfare state and for a fair and prosperous Britain.

David Laws: As the Front-Bench speakers for the Conservative party and for the Government observed, this is a timely moment to consider tax credits and the future of the system. Not only do we have the figures that were published last week on the 2004-05 performance of the tax credit system, but we have the excellent report from the Treasury Committee, which throws a great deal of light on the salient issues that we shall discuss today, many of which were glossed over in the Chief Secretary's response. I hope that the Paymaster General will be able to say more when she sums up.
	I welcome the Chief Secretary to his new responsibilities and am glad to see that he is taking a leading role in tax credits policy. Indeed, he seems to have been taking the lead role over the past week as the Government dealt with the implications of last week's figures.
	I had not spotted the statistics that the shadow Chancellor drew to our attention, which indicate that in the Chief Secretary's constituency there are greater problems with the tax credit system than anywhere else in the country. I hope that that will ensure that there is a stronger spokesman in the Treasury than there has been in the past for the interests of those who have been failed by the system and who are looking for reforms, rather than complacency, from the Government.
	There are two aspects of tax credits that we must debate today. The first group of issues are those on which the Select Committee commented in its excellent report, concerning the practicalities of the tax credit system, with its existing broad design. The parliamentary ombudsman commented on many of those in her report a year ago. The Chief Secretary said that the Government accepted all the ombudsman's recommendations, but he failed to say which had been implemented to date, and he is surely wrong to say that the Government accept all the recommendations. I thought it had already been made clear by the Paymaster General that the Government did not accept the ombudsman's most important recommendation, No. 10, which was to write off the overpayments that have occurred in the past owing to official error. Perhaps the Paymaster General can put on the record later whether the Government's position on that has changed.

Philip Davies: The hon. Gentleman hits upon something that affects one of my constituents, Susan Webster, who is in a distressing situation. She made Revenue and Customs aware each time her circumstances changed, as HMRC has confirmed to me on its hotline, yet she still had an overpayment of 1,000, which she is expected to pay back. Revenue and Customs refuses to write off that sum. Surely it is wrong, when someone makes HMRC aware of changes in their circumstances at the right time, that they are still expected to pay back a considerable amount of money.

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. He draws to our attention the fact that the Government have been in denial about the problems of tax credits ever since the system was established, and they have maintained from the beginningit is picked up in the Treasury Committee's reportthat all the problems that people have faced with tax credits have been due to their own incompetence in dealing with the system. In fact, most of the people I have seen in my advice centres in my constituencyI must have seen 250 to 300 over the past two yearshave faced problems that were caused in some way by official error. That is what the Government have neither acknowledged nor dealt with in the design of the system.

Roger Gale: Does the hon. Gentleman recall the Prime Minister standing at the Dispatch Box at Prime Minister's Question Time and saying that the Government would not seek to reclaim money in any case where the error was shown to be on the part of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs? Does he agree that the Government are quite simply in breach of that undertaking?

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman is quite right that the Prime Minister made a commitment that the Government have not kept. Indeed, it was a commitment that the Chancellor of the Exchequer repeated on GMTV. But our constituents have found themselves in a double lock where they have not only to demonstrate that there was error by HMRC, but to demonstrate by a very strict standard that they could not have been aware of those particular problems.

Michael Weir: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Laws: I shall make a little progress and then give way.
	The Chief Secretary dealt with some of the successes of the tax credit system, and 17 of the 18 lines of the Government's amendment trumpet its successes. Every hon. Member today has acknowledged that for many people, tax credits have made an enormous difference. It would have been almost unbelievable that a Government could spend 15.8 billion in a single year on means-tested benefits without benefiting anybody. The issue is that the design of the tax credits system has been fundamentally flawed, that overpayments are fundamental to the system and that they have driven into poverty many of the people whom the Government have sought to help most, as has been shown by not only the Select Committee's report, but the ombudsman's report, which has been sitting on the shelf for the best part of a year.
	The Chief Secretary and the Paymaster General would do well to read the leader article in the  Financial Times last week on the day on which the Government published the latest statistics, in which the leader writer said:
	Compassionate governments insulate low-income hard-working families from the ravages of a global market. Enlightened governments seek such protection by rewarding work through their tax and social security systems. Arrogant governments close their ears when these policies are failing.
	One of the greatest disappointments in terms of the Government's response over the past year, and to some extent even the Chief Secretary's response today, is that there has been an arrogance and an unwillingness to accept the problems that have been created for many people on the lowest incomes throughout the country.
	The problems of the tax credits system, in terms of the loss of public money and the enormous overpayments that have had to be recovered from people on low incomes, are already well known. Many hon. Members today have already spoken, and I am sure others will later, of their own experiences of dealing with the individuals who have had these problems, many of whom have never been significantly in debt before, are baffled by the complexity of the system, and have got into these enormous debts and overpayments through no fault of their own. It is on those practical issues that I seek some reassurance from the Government today.

Stephen Timms: The hon. Gentleman's main proposal is the reintroduction of a much less flexible system, like the old family credit system based on fixed awards. He will have seen what the Treasury Committee said about that yesterday. I quote:
	there seemed to be little support amongst our witnesses for returning to a regime of fixed awards.
	Indeed the hon. Gentleman's predecessor in his current post explicitly supported the ability of the system to be flexible in the way that it is. Does that give the hon. Gentleman any pause to reflect on the merits of the proposal that he has been running with for some time now.

David Laws: I find the Government's position on this issue rather difficult to fathom. The Chief Secretary has said a number of times that the fixed system would have terrible disadvantages and that it would be some kind of disaster, and that was the line that the Paymaster General used to take. But at the same time they have acknowledged to the shadow Chancellor that they are considering precisely such an option and that they are keeping it under review. I remember being in this House a year ago and hearing the Paymaster General tell us how the alternatives to the then system were ridiculous; that a fixed award system would be ludicrous and that increasing the disregard to the outrageous figure of 10,000 would be enormously expensive. Yet a few months later the disregard went up from 2,500 to 25,000. The Chief Secretary would do well to acknowledge that in paragraph 52 of their report, members of the Select Committee say that they had not sought in this inquiry
	to ask whether the model of tax credits regime which the Government has adopted is the right model.
	That is not what the Select Committee has pretended to do. The Committee also took evidence from a series of people, as the Chief Secretary will know, including one-parent families, who want to see a return to fixed awards; the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which believes that that option needs to be looked at seriously; and the Child Poverty Action Group, which has said that it believes that if the existing system cannot be made to work, there should be a major redesign. If the Chief Secretary really believes that the system of fixed awards is so flawed, why do not the Government carry out a public assessment? Why do they not commission some sort of research about other systems in the world? We have this extraordinary debate where it is hinted that a fixed system would be unacceptable, yet the Government simultaneously say that the system is being kept under review.
	I noticed today that one of the things that the Chief Secretary is trying to do by continually coming back to the issue of a fixed award system, which was not even an aspect of the Select Committee's report, or one of the recommendations of the ombudsman, is to try to distract attention from the lack of progress on some of the major issues in the ombudsman's report, which came out a year ago. I find it extraordinary that the Chief Secretary is unable to say how many of the ombudsman's recommendations made a full year ago have been implemented. I find it extraordinary that he does not know that the principal recommendation that the ombudsman made has been rejected by the Government. It is extraordinary that the Government do not seem to have taken on board the implications of the existing system for low-income families. It is also extraordinary that, one year after the ombudsman's report, which was the most powerful critique of the impact that the tax credits system was having on some low income families and will probably never be bettered in terms of its insights into the tax credits system and its recommendations for putting it right in its existing form, a cross-party Select Committee with many thoughtful but also instinctively loyal Members of the Government, a majority Labour Committee, should be reporting that
	we are not convinced that the Paymaster General and the Department fully realise the extent to which HMRC needs to re-focus its administrative structures for tax credits around the needs of claimants.
	It is astonishing that the Select Committee has gone on to conclude:
	We consider it would be much more helpful if the Department were to focus on the quality of the service it provides to claimants, rather than seeking to attribute the majority of problems with the tax credits regime to error or omission on the part of claimants.
	The Select Committee refers to the Paymaster General's statement about a year ago when she attributed virtually every aspect of the overpayments to errors that other people were making, and no aspect of the overpayments to the errors that are being made by the system itself and by the Inland Revenue.

Mark Francois: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if, as the Government claim, the pre-Budget report package is supposed to be essentially revenue neutral, and because the tenfold increase in the disregard is expensivealthough the Government will not tell the House how much it costs, even though we know that they knowin logic, the only way to keep the package neutral is that HMRC will have to rule more harshly on those other decisions about who is responsible for overpayments, and that will have a deleterious effect on the low-income families who were supposed to be helped in the first place?

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman makes a serious point about the Government's package that was presented in the PBR last year, and the Treasury Committee's report was fairly scathing in setting out the lack of evidence about costings for those changes. I suspect that that is either because the disregard of 25,000 will be much more expensive than the Government expect, or perhaps the Government were never expecting ever to be able to reclaim a lot of those overpayments in any case, and therefore have treated them as written off.
	Let us come to the main recommendations of the ombudsman in her report last year, and the main recommendations about overpayments in the Select Committee's report and what I would like the Government to focus on as their first priority. I will touch upon some of the interesting issues that have been raised with regard to fixed awards and some of the comments about means-testing. There are challenges there for all the parties. But the first matter to get right is the system as it is working now.
	There are a number of problems in the ombudsman's report that, in fairness to the Government, they have started to try to deal with. Unfortunately, the problems that they seem to have prioritised have been some of the smallest and therefore the easiest to change. The biggest recommendation of all, which would have involved a lot of money, writing off overpayments due to official error, has been disregarded by the Government. But the really critical recommendations that the ombudsman has made concern the way in which overpayments are treated. That was clear from today's briefing by the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, from recommendations 10 to 17 of the Select Committee's report, and from the shadow Chancellor's questions, but it was not clear in the answer from the Chief Secretary. We must move away from the type of system that one-parent families described in the Committee's evidence as a system designed by HMRC that would work with IT rather than with claimants. That is the type of system that the Paymaster General described to me in a letter last June, when she said that it was right that there should be
	a presumption of recovery by means of reducing or stopping further payments
	because most overpayments would be due to errors by claimants. In other words, the system as it has always worked from the beginning has been driven by IT and computers, not by any sense of justice.
	In light of the responses by the Paymaster General and the Chief Secretary, I am very disappointed that one year on from the recommendations made by the parliamentary ombudsman, the Government seem to have made absolutely no progress on putting in place a pause so that people are able to challenge the overpayments that have been alleged against them. That pause must not only mean that people are not guilty until proven innocent but allow them to understand why the overpayment has occurred. At the moment, the information about that is completely inadequate in most cases.

Sally Keeble: This is a very important point that comes back to how one manages the collection of debts, which is what they are in some instances, from people on low incomes. We must ensure that, in the name of having a pause, we do not build another big delay into the system that makes it worse for people who are having difficulties. That is not a flippant point but a serious one about managing income, repayments and debt.

David Laws: The hon. Lady makes a legitimate point about the balance between not allowing people to get further into debt and overpayment and giving them a reasonable breathing space to challenge overpayments. I am sure that she accepts that the existing system that presumes that people are guilty until they prove themselves innocent is inadequate and, as the ombudsman puts it, systemic maladministration. It is fundamentally unjust.
	What has struck me from my own constituency cases is the complexity of making decisions about many of the cases where overpayments occur. Looking at the system from the top, one might think that one would be dealing either with an overpayment caused by an outright error by the Inland Revenue, where it was obvious to the person that 1 million had turned up in their bank account, or the opposite, where there had been a case of fraud. A huge number of cases are much more complicated, and the tax credits system needs to deal with that. They usually arise when individuals have accurately reported information over a helpline or on paper to the Inland Revenue. Those individuals usually then assume that the Inland Revenue will use that information correctly, but often it does not. It makes errors that it expects people to pick up from extremely complex forms which most people do not understand, and which, in fact, many Members of Parliament probably would not understand.
	I can think of an enormous number of cases in my advice centres just over the past few weeks. People have reported that in a particular year they had no income and then have gone into a job, and the tax credits award notice that came back showed them simultaneously working 40 hours and also having no income. People have been on the basic state pension but the award notice has said that they are on pension credit and they have not understood that. People have put in one application for a disabled child with particular mobility components and something else has turned up on the form. Many of these cases are not black and white. The existing system, which applies the double lock whereby someone has somehow to prove not only official error but that they could not have found it by looking through all the forms, is completely inadequate for most of our constituents.
	I cannot understand why the Chief Secretary does not accept that the systems of the Department for Work and Pensions and the Inland Revenue are fundamentally different in relation to the assumptions that are made about error and reasonableness. We need a fairer test.

Jim Cousins: May I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that his predecessor as Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Northavon (Steve Webb), was apparently able as a Member of Parliament to claim tax credits, perfectly properly, by discounting his pension contributions from his income? Does he find, as I do, that most of our constituents do not do that, and that that accounts for a great deal of the overpayment?

David Laws: With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, who is my former colleague on the Treasury Committee, I am sure that he is making a serious pointthat one needs to be a professor of social policy and a former fellow of the Institute for Fiscal Studies to understand this system. I was once a Treasury spokesman for my party, and I am now supposed to be the Work and Pensions spokesman, yet I cannot understand some aspects of the forms that the Government send out. They are still not simple enough, and it is still unsatisfactory that there is no statutory test. It is bizarre that the Government have been maintaining several different standards for writing off overpayments over the past couple of years. It is disappointing that none of those issues was addressed by the Chief Secretary. The Treasury Committee's report goes over incredibly important ground that we knew about a year ago following the report by the parliamentary ombudsman.

Michael Weir: I am interested in the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the complexity of the system. I used to be a solicitor, and I find it very difficult to follow. The situation is even worse than he suggests. A constituent of mine recognised that she had been overpaid and continually told the Revenue so, but it would not accept it. Eventually she got a letter from it claiming an overpayment and saying that although she had repeatedly said that she was being overpaid, it was not reasonable for her to accept the payments. What sort of reasonableness are the Revenue working to when they send out such letters?

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman is right. Many hon. Members who have had people with tax credit problems coming to see them will recognise such cases, and yet will be entirely uncertain about how the Inland Revenue would deal with them in practice. I have referred cases to the tax credits office where a correct judgment has been made to overturn the overpayments. I have had other cases where there is still fundamental injusticesometimes involving people with serious disabilities or people with learning difficulties who could not possibly be expected to understand aspects of the form having given the correct information to the Treasury.

George Mudie: I listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins). I went on television to defend the Liberal spokesperson for claiming tax credit despite a wage of about 60,000. This is a good opportunity to put that on the agenda. My personal view is that if a system directed at the poorest and most vulnerable extends to people such as MPs, that clearly pushes a lot of work on to the Revenue that it should not have because we should not be able to claim. The system should be tighter and directed at the most needy.

David Laws: The hon. Gentleman makes a sensible point. As he says, people are entitled to claim from a system that the Government have established and on which they have a legitimate claim. He will know that there will be huge sympathy for his viewpoint. It seems bizarre that people who otherwise pay the upper rate of tax can get such benefits. The Government's difficulty with a means-tested system is that if one wants to deny the benefits to such individuals, one has to taper it away more sharply, which raises the disincentive issues mentioned by the shadow Chancellor.
	When the Paymaster General winds up, I would like to hear what progress has been made on the crucial recommendations made by the parliamentary ombudsman a year ago, which the Treasury Committee has felt it necessary to come back to in its report. That should not have been necessary. The Government should have been able to progress these issues by now, even if they had decided to make changes that could not have been implemented for some time.
	I would also like to follow up the shadow Chancellor's point about fraud. Those matters deserve a much bigger debate than we have today. However, it is clear that the Comptroller and Auditor General was expecting the updated fraud figures this spring. Have provisional figures already been made available to him? When will they be given to the House?
	We need to have a wider debate on fixed awards and the balance between flexibility and stability. The Select Committee acknowledged that it did not fully investigate that in the report. It would be enormously beneficial to the House if it could examine some of those issues in future. Even the Government have had to learn to some extent from their experience when the original design of the tax credits system went wrong. The Chief Secretary's claims that a fixed award system would be wrong or damaging sits ill with the Government's statements that they are keeping the matter under review. If they are keeping it under review, it would be interesting to know what they are doing to review it.

Rob Marris: rose

David Laws: Are the Government simply keeping it in the bottom drawer or doing anything active to discover whether the sort of system that exists in Canadadoubtless the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris) is about to brief us on thatshould apply in this country?

Rob Marris: The hon. Gentleman has been generous in giving way. Of course, we acknowledge that there are problems with the system. As a Government Back Bencher, I know where my party is going and I have some idea now of where the Conservatives are goingalthough they are not entirely clearbut I am beginning to feel like one of the hon. Gentleman's constituents in Yeovil because I do not know what his party stands for. He says that we need more debate here and more debate therethat is goodbut his speech, with interventions, has lasted more than 20 minutes and he has not outlined his party's policy. Will he please do so?

David Laws: I advise the hon. Gentleman to read the Select Committee report and the parliamentary ombudsman's report and ask the Government why they have not implemented the recommendations, which we support, that should have been implemented as a priority a year ago. I ask the hon. Gentleman to ask the Chief Secretary to consider seriously the case for a fixed award system such as that in Canada. I thought that he would brief us on Canada's excellent experience of a fixed and stable system. The Government should examine that option because stability is as important if not more important than flexibility for families on low incomes.
	We all understand that the Government have made, at considerable cost to the public finances, an enormous commitment to trying to reduce child poverty and improve work incentives. They have changed the terms of the political debate, even though there are some major problems with the design of tax credits and the extent to which we can rely on increasing use of means-tested benefits. The Chief Secretary will know about that from his time in the Department for Work and Pensions, dealing with the pension credit.
	My major criticism of the Government is not that they have rejected all our proposals for a fixed award system, but that we are sitting here, one year after the parliamentary ombudsman reported and two years after we knew about the problems, and the most important recommendations have not been implemented. I do not like to personalise such matters but it is regrettable that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not bothered to be here today and that he can find time to change his diary and deal with international issues but cannot find time to tackle an important issue such as this. It is also regrettable that much that the Paymaster General has said in the past couple of years has been complacent and reflected a state of denial. That must lie behind the fact that a year has passed and yet we have made no progress on the key issue. I therefore believe that the Department would benefit from new ministerial responsibilities for tax credits.
	I started by quoting from an excellent leading article that appeared in the  Financial Times on the day when the tax credit figures were published last week. It concluded that the Chancellor's
	failure to sort out the tax credits mess bodes ill for this government, the Labour party and low income working families.
	I hope that Ministers will listen to hon. Members today. If they do not listen to Liberal Democrat Members, I hope that they will listen to the ombudsman and their colleagues on the Select Committee. If they do not, they will pay a high price at the ballot box in losing the votes of precisely those people whom the tax credit system was designed to help.

John McFall: It is a funny old world when both Opposition parties tell us that we must refer to the Treasury Committee report to find out where we are going. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris), I am puzzled about where the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats are going.
	The official Opposition proposal for a more flexible inflexible system is something to get one's teeth into. If the Conservative party is a serious party, its members must stand up to the plate on the matter. At Prime Minister's questions, the Leader of the Opposition referred to the Treasury Committee report and was misleading. I looked at the Conservative website's home page today. It states that, as a result of the report, the Opposition would hold a half-day debate and that
	Mr. Osborne was speaking as the cross-party Treasury Select Committee issued a report condemning the tax credit system.
	That is wrong, wrong and wrong again.
	Our Committee is regularly mentioned in the House. I love hearing the Opposition referring to the noble position that I take on specific issues when it pleases them and I am delighted that the Committee's report forms the backbone of the debate. The official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats have exposed it to the light.

David Laws: I believe that we are considering the sub-Committee's report. The Chairman of the sub-Committee launched the report by saying that the tax credit system was not fit for purpose. The right hon. Gentleman is therefore in danger of giving a false impression about the extent of support for the system.

John McFall: Absolutely not. I am surprised at the hon. Gentleman, who has served on the Treasury Committee. He should know the rules. The sub-Committee is a creature of the main Committee. The sub-Committee does not publish a report by itself. We are considering a Treasury Committee report and the Chairman of that Committee is the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire. I am in my place to deal with the comments about the main Committee's report.

David Laws: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

John McFall: No, I do not believe that I should give way in the light of the ignorance that is being displayed about the way in which the Treasury Committee goes about its business.

Sally Keeble: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

John McFall: Given that I have given way to a former member of the Treasury Committee who does not know what he is talking about, I should like to give way to a current member of the Treasury Committee in the hope that she knows what she is talking about.

Sally Keeble: The report states:
	We agree that the policy underpinning tax credits of taking people, and especially children, out of poverty is laudable, and that the programme has had considerable success.
	It states that the policy is right and has had considerable success. That is a good verdict from a cross-party Committee.

John McFall: My hon. Friend shows tremendous promise.
	The Treasury Committee supports the principle of tax credits. That is clear in our report. Indeed, we stated that we
	are encouraged to hear that they are providing financial assistance to so many people, especially families with children.
	We noted further:
	Tax credits have succeeded... in achieving a significantly higher rate of take-up than was the case under previous regimes.
	The tax credit system has three overriding objectives. The first is the increase in support for families, the second is the decrease in child poverty figures and the third is providing an adequate incentive to work.

George Mudie: Criticism of the Paymaster General is unfair. The Select Committee report stated:
	We welcome the close attention that the Government continues to pay to improving the design of the regime, as evidenced by the package of reforms announced in the PBR 2005.
	That is the part of the Select Committee report that the Opposition parties do not care to quote.

John McFall: I thank my hon. Friend but he knows that, as Chairman, I am here to provide objectivity and to reflect the comprehensive nature of the report. I have not once been criticised by members of Opposition parties about that.

David Gauke: As a member of the Treasury Committee, perhaps I can counterbalance the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie). Paragraph 28 states that
	we are not convinced that the Paymaster General and the Department fully realise the extent to which HMRC needs to re-focus its administrative structures for tax credits around the needs of claimants.
	The report makes it clear that there is no understanding of the role of official error, of fraud or of the costs of the new package. Those issues also need to be addressed.

John McFall: The hon. Gentleman anticipates some of the points that I am going to make. His raising that point further underlines my objectivity on this matter.
	On increasing support for families, we now have 20 million people getting support, as the Paymaster General said, involving 6 million families and 10 million children. That is an increase on the results of every past policy, and the take-up rate among low earners has been 93 per cent. That is a big improvement compared with the take-up rates of 57 per cent. in the early years of family income supplement, of 62 per cent. for family credit and of 65 per cent. for working families tax credit. That is why the Select Committee has endorsed this policy.
	The Select Committee also endorses the child poverty objectives that have resulted in 700,000 children being lifted out of relative poverty, and the measures on creating adequate financial incentives to work. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury mentioned the tax burden. Like him, I look to the survey carried out by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which showed that, as a result of the tax credit, there had been a large fall in the tax burden for families. The tax burden on a single-earner couple with no children earning 21,000 has fallen from 17.3 per cent. of gross earnings in 1997 to 9.8 per cent. in 2004. That is the lowest rate for any G7 country, and it is indeed an incentive for people to get into work. The effect of the policy on children is also important, and the Select Committee report notes that the tax credit has helped to ensure that the number of families with children paying no net tax has risen from under 2.5 million to more than 3 million in 2006-07. That is a considerable improvement.
	However, I must ask whether everything is going right with the regime, and the answer is most definitely no. That is why the Treasury Committee has sought to address a number of points. Is the regime fit for purpose? Yes, in terms of the majority of people getting tax credits. However, it is not fit for purpose for the minority of people having problems with the tax credit system. That is why the Select Committee visited the tax credit office in Preston, where we looked at the way in which the regime was working in practice. Overpayments were a big issue there.
	We examined the problem of overpayments, and the staff gave us three reasons for it. The first is that people's incomes rise from one year to the next. The second is that families overestimate the extent to which their income has fallen. The third is that the provision of payments at the start of a tax year might be based on out-of-date information. Those three reasons combined account for 70 per cent. of the overpayments. I would like to think that the Select Committee has performed a service in identifying those three issues so that they can be tackled. The Select Committee also noted that 30 per cent. of the overpayments were due to delays in reporting changes in a family's circumstances.
	The Conservative and Liberal Democrat spokesmen both mentioned the arguments for either fixed or flexible systems, and I would like to say to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) that that subject was very much a feature of the Committee's discussions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) gave oral evidence to the Committee in which he said that he was getting fewer complaints at his surgeries about tax credits now. I have also taken anecdotal evidence on this, and that is certainly a feature of what hon. Members tell me more widely.
	If we were to go back to a fixed system, hon. Members would have an increasing number of people coming to see us about the problems involved. I would also like to point out to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury that if we returned to a fixed system, we would not be responding to the demands of a modern labour market. That is important because 3 million people change jobs every year in a modern labour market, and each year more than 200,000 move into new or better jobs, resulting in an increase in their family income by 10,000 a year or more.
	Those are the reasons for the overpayments. I cannot stress strongly enough that, if we are to have a flexible system, overpayments will be a feature of it. So how can we manage this in a client-sensitive manner? I might be departing from what the Select Committee has said on this, but my experience is that the benefits of a flexible system are there for everyone in the family.

Jim Cousins: Will my right hon. Friend comment on paragraph 30 of the report's conclusions and recommendations? The Select Committee makes it clear that, if we are to have a system with the flexibility that he described, it will not be reasonable to expect to achieve staff reductions. In fact, the number of people being employed to achieve a more flexible system is growing, and that pattern is likely to continue. We will not be able to achieve staff reductions if we want to achieve flexibility.

John McFall: That is a very good point. That issue was raised with us at the tax credit office in Preston. As a result of the demands on the office, extra members of staff were being drafted into that area. When the Minister and others look at the Gershon reviews, and at the demands that have been made on the Department already, they should keep this issue up front. We realise that this cannot be fixed overnight; it will take time. I will mention some of the problems involved as I go through my speech. However, it is an issue that we can all tackle constructively.
	I know that the Chancellor has an open mind about this system. The media and others focus on the fact that there have been 2 billion of overpayments this year. That equates in the public's mind to 2 billion of losses, but that is not the case. However, it does give the impression that the system is running less than smoothly. So perhaps the Chancellor will anticipate that reaction and say, Okay, we'll go back to a fixed system. It will be a surer system. But will it serve the interests of our constituents? I do not think so.

David Laws: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that this is not just an issue of presentational embarrassment for the Government or lost money for the taxpayer? It is also a fact that many of the overpayments are being recovered from people on extremely low incomes, sometimes when the problem has arisen through official error rather than their own. That is an even bigger problem than the fact that the Government have paid out 2 billion more than they intended.

John McFall: The hon. Gentleman must accept that overpayments are an inherent part of a flexible system. But how can we marry such a system with a client-sensitive system? The Select Committee had that discussion with members of the unions and officials in Preston when we visited the tax credit office there, and that is the important issue for them.
	The overpayments were 2.2 billion in 2004-05 and 1.8 billion in 2005-06, and I hope that the Paymaster General will respond to this point when she winds up the debate. A breakdown is needed of those overpayments to determine what the Government's figures are. The figure of 4 billion over two years needs to be broken down.

Philip Dunne: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that this is not just about the overall amount of money involved? It is also about the number of people involved. He referred to a minority who had received overpayments, but we heard from the shadow Chancellor earlier that, in many constituencies, nearly 50 per cent. of those entitled to payments are either being underpaid or overpaid. I have just worked out that, in my constituency, 47 per cent. are getting the wrong payment. Given the administrative nightmare that is taking place in HMRC, the impact on people's lives of having to deal with this problem is getting them very upset, and we have to spend all our time dealing with that. Solving the problem of administrative incompetence is absolutely critical to getting this matter right.

John McFall: As I said earlier, overpayments are an integral part of the system, but it is necessary to distinguish between individuals who can make an adequate response to the tax credit office about overpayments and thoseperhaps people on low incomes and in distresswho cannot. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman's second point.

Michael Weir: I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but does he not accept that, as many other Members have pointed out, some people who recognise that they have been overpaid find it difficult to persuade Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs that they have been overpaid? That prevents the problem from being sorted out earlier.

John McFall: I realise that, and if Members give me an opportunity I shall say more about it shortly.

Rob Marris: My right hon. Friend is doing a great job in drawing out what I perceive as a consensus, evidenced by the last two interventions. The consensus on both sides of the House seems to be that tax credits are a good thing and are doing a great deal to alleviate poverty, and that there are administrative teething problems. The only difference now seems to concern the magnitude of the problems, and how far the Government have gone towards addressing them. The overpayment figures for two years that my right hon. Friend has given show that they are moving in the right direction. If the Opposition would be a little more flexible, we could have consensus on that. There are problems, which are being fixed. It will take more effort to fix them further.

John McFall: The Paymaster General dealt with a number of those problems in the pre-Budget report, and I am sure that she will discuss them later.
	End-of-year adjustments feature in any flexible system. The only way in which to eliminate overpayments is to have a fixed system in which eligibility is based on the previous year's income and circumstances, and I certainly do not want to go down that road.
	The Treasury Committee said that there should be a shift in the culture of HMRC if the tax credits system was to be a success. HMRC conducted a review of the merger of the two departments, which the Select Committee recommended to the Government. As has been pointed out, there are two entirely different cultures, and the client-centred culture has not been predominant. That must be addressed, and I hope that David Varney, HMRC's chief executive, and his colleagues will read the report with that constructive criticism in mind.
	I should like the Paymaster General to think about what the Committee said about official error. The Committee believes that it has been a cause of overpayments in a significant number of cases, and that the Government should publish a complete analysis of incidences. There are also the errors caused by the IT system, which a number of Members have mentioned. Constituents have come to me about it. After our visit to Preston, the reason is obvious to us. When a client telephones a civil servant who then consults a computer, not all the information on the client will be on that computer. If decisions are being made on the basis of incomplete information, we can be sure that the system will be made worse. The IT problem must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
	When we visited Preston, we learned that only about 25 per cent. of claims went straight through the automated system with no need for manual intervention. About 80 per cent. of new claims required intervention, and it was required by about 30 to 35 per cent. of claims for renewal. The Public and Commercial Services Union told us that the Government initially intended the rapid data capture processthe conversion of written information from application forms into electronic datato handle about 90 per cent. of claims without further need for human intervention. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, Central (Jim Cousins) mentioned staff numbers, and those figures make his point. There is an urgent need to keep staff at the tax credit office.
	A recurring theme was the IT system's lack of flexibility, and the difficulty of correcting a mistake once it had been entered into the system. Staff mayas they told usaccept that the information is wrong, but may still be unable to correct the error.
	The Committee also referred to fraud, error and organised crime. When the Paymaster General appeared before the Committee, I personally interrogated her on issues relating to staff from the Department of Work and Pensions and from Network Rail. HMRC has closed the e-portal and it feels that the fraud issue can be addressed, but there is still a problem over national insurance numbers. Vigilance is needed.

George Mudie: Perhaps it is wrong to raise this when my right hon. Friend is talking about fraud, but I think we should record the problems that the Committee had with Electronic Data Systems. We were not able to confirm that we could discuss the matter with the Minister, because we were bound by a settlement. The Public Accounts Committee has raised the issue, and it has been raised by us. I think it should be put on record that the settlement with EDS is insupportablethat it is quite wrong, requires investigation, and should never be replicated.

John McFall: My hon. Friend makes a good point. I remind the Paymaster General that David Varney, the HMRC chief executive, contacted us and offered us a confidential briefing. However, that would naturally have meant that we could not open our mouths at any future date. As politicians and public representatives, we were not prepared to enter into any such negotiation.
	There is a credibility problem. There is, perhaps, a perception of impropriety. There may have been no impropriety, but the position is far from satisfactory, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Mudie) has done us a service by referring to it.
	The Committee welcomed the increase in disregard from 2,500 to 25,000, but the Government say that they expect the increase to reduce the current level of overpayments by a third. That suggests that the remaining two thirds of overpayments arise as a result of changes in claimants' circumstances other than increases in income. Consequently, over the next few yearsalthough the tax credits regime may see a decrease in the number of overpaymentslevels are likely to continue to be high. At the same time, claimants' problems may well become increasingly complex as their case histories within the regime lengthen. I should like the Paymaster General to examine that issue, as well the important issues of the pause and the referral to an independent tribunal for appeal. We have mentioned both those issues.

Sally Keeble: On the independent tribunal appeal, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important that we see the report first, as the Treasury Committee suggests, so that we can determine the practicality of having an independent appeal system, which is what we recommended?

John McFall: I agree and hope that the Paymaster General continues to talk to the Committee while she considers the pause. We said that we were concerned by the apparent lack of urgency on the part of the Government and the Paymaster General in seeking to implement the pause before recovery of overpayment, given that automatic recovery of overpayments is contrary to natural justice. We recommend that the Government reassess the priority that they have assigned to implementing the pause. I hope that she refers to that.
	In deciding whether to write off an overpayment, HMRC should not apply a stringently objective reasonableness test, but take account of things such as a claimant's circumstances and the clarity of award notices. I know that the Paymaster General has considered that.

Michael Wills: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the important innovations that the Paymaster General and her team introduced was the hardship team, which examined individual circumstances and could vary the amount of repayment? Does he share my concern that the hardship team was disbanded at the start of this financial year and no date has been set for it to be re-established? Does he share my hope that the Paymaster General will address that?

John McFall: I agree entirely. I do not know the particular circumstances of the case, but I am willing to take my hon. Friend's word on it. However, as I said, we have to distinguish between those who have been overpaid and can pay the money back adequately, and those low-income families who are experiencing hardship and are in distress. As he says, a hardship team is essential in determining that, and I hope that the Paymaster General considers the issue.
	I think that I have exhausted all possible interventions and finish on three things mentioned earlier. First, on the support for families, more families are getting the credit. Secondly, we are making progress on child poverty targets. Thirdly, on incentives to work, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East mentioned young people who are unemployed. I am a former school teacher. When I first took up teaching, a lot of the kids whom I taught in the area where I lived went on not to work, but to unemployment. I would meet some of them five, 10 years later. They would be with their wife or kids, pushing a pram, and I would dread asking, What are you doing? I was reluctant to do that. Now I can walk down my high street and ask people what they are doing with more confidence and more authority because more people are in work.
	We need a flexible system that responds to people's needs and provides incentives to work, especially for young people, because we must remember that unemployment is the single most important determinant of poverty. If we can have such a system, warts and all, it deserves our support. However, we will keep our critical eye on the Paymaster General over the next few months. We will not let up and will work as a team to ensure that we get the system right.

Roger Gale: I am saddened that the Paymaster General is alone on the Front Bench. In the time that I have dealt with her on such issues, and on the two occasions when I have found it necessary to go to the Treasury to meet her to discuss them, I have found her and her civil servants extremely courteous. The fact of the matter is, however, that a ghost is missing from the banquetit is the author of this shambles, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is conspicuous that over the three years of malfunction of the system that he introduced he has not taken part in one of these debates. Like the Duke of Plaza-Toro, he has led his troops from behind. Frankly, that level of political timidity in somebody whoat least onceaspired to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is very unbecoming indeed.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton) correctly said that the debate is about people, and it is [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but we do not want a sedentary interchange. It is extremely disruptive.

Roger Gale: I want to deal with the people issues. Some correspondence fortuitously landed on my desk this morning. It was from a constituent and pretty much encapsulates much of the argument. He enclosed a letter from HM Revenue and Customs, which was sent to him on 17 May. It said:
	On 25 June 2004, an amendment was made to your award as you had informed us that
	your wife's
	correct income was 7500.00. Unfortunately due to a system error
	your income
	of 23930.00 was not taken into consideration and you were awarded a higher entitlement than normal.
	Two award notices dated 25-06-2004 were issued to you, one referring to your 2003-2004 award and the other referring to your 2004-2005 award. They both stated that you were now entitled to 5695.85 tax credits...In our view
	the Treasury view
	it was reasonable for you to have known that due to the increased level of your joint household income this increased entitlement was incorrect...Although this overpayment was caused by a mistake on our behalf, we do not believe it was reasonable for you to think this increased entitlement was correct. I consider that you should have been aware that your payments were wrong, therefore the decision to recover both overpayments is correct.
	In other words, Game, set and match; we're right and you're wrong.
	My constituent replied:
	In your last letter in which you changed your mind about how the overpayment occurred and we pointed out errors so you 'reconsider'. We find this wholly unreasonable and yet again you have made a glaring mistake in stating
	my constituent
	received Tax Credits via his employer totalling 1,393.74...In fact we received no tax credits via my employer as the enclosed wage slips will verify.
	You state it was reasonable for us to know we should not be entitled to the overpayment, may we enquire why? We supplied all the information, you made the errors, you stated our award may change...You accept the errors, You make more errors in stating tax credits paid via employer...You change your mind over the reasons for overpayment and we are meant to believe you when you state we should have been responsible.
	The Revenue and Customs has batteries of civil servants and an unbelievably expensive information technology system paid for by United Kingdom taxpayers, yet it cannot get its sums right. However, it expects our constituents to work outpresumably on the back of an envelope, without the help of the civil servants and the computersums that the Treasury cannot itself get right, and to take responsibility for the Treasury's errors.
	The Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box at a Prime Minister's Question Time and told the House, in terms, that the Treasury would not seek to reclaim money that was paid as a result of a fault of the Treasury. Ever since that statement was made, the Treasury has wriggled and weasled. It has sought to claim, in one form or another, that all the problemsproblems that have been referred to every Member of Parliamentare the fault not of the Treasury or of Revenue and Customs, but of the man who cannot work out complex sums on the back of an envelope, who, in this instance, is my constituent.

Philip Dunne: All Members could give similar examples to that which my hon. Friend offers of HMRC's excuses for its incompetence. A problem of the sort that we have not heard mention of so far arrived on my desk yesterday. As a result of an internal systems breakdown, an overpayment remained unrecognised for more than six months. The advice given to my constituentthe excusewas, Treat it as an interest-free loan and we will come and get it from you later. We cannot sort it now because things are in such a mess.

Roger Gale: My hon. Friend highlights a point that has been made time and again in our debate. You will be relieved to know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I do not propose to read out all the 106 cases with which I have dealt. Twenty-nine are still live, many have been outstanding for more than two years, one has been referred to the adjudicator, and eight more will have to be referred to the adjudicator. Because of our debate, I plucked out 12 cases from the 29 live ones and discovered that there was an average repayment claim of 2,190 per household, a lowest figure of 611 and a highest figure of 4,262.
	By implication, we are talking about some of the poorest, most underprivileged families in the country. Sadly, the per capita level of deprivation in North Thanet, in east Kent, is still among the highest in the United Kingdom. Can any Member begin to contemplate the terror and misery felt by a young man or woman who picks off the doormat a bill for 4,000, when they do not have 4,000 pence in the bank, and such money as they did have has long been spent on household and living essentials? How can the Treasury and the chairman of the Revenue and Customs, who was rewarded with a knighthood for his incompetence, dare to justify this sort of situation? We know how, because in response to another constituency case, a Revenue and Customs senior business manager wrote to me on 1 June and said:
	Overpayments are sometimes inevitable in a flexible system as changes in circumstances which reduce entitlement can happen at any time in the year.
	Forgive me, but the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall) has referred over and over again to the wonderfully flexible system. The system is flexible, in so far as I can see, in terms of the number of excuses that it allows Revenue and Customs to generate for its failures, but it is not responsive to data inputI think that that is the expression.
	In evidence to the Treasury Committee, the Paymaster General said with tremendous and accustomed candour:
	I am not a computer person.
	The problem is that not only is the right hon. Lady not a computer person, but so far I can see, the people responsible for the installation and maintenance of the Treasury's computers are not computer people eitherthey are not capable of getting it rightand the result is a Treasury Committee report that is absolutely scathing in its determination.
	We are dealing with real people. Teething troubles have been referred toif there are such troubles, all I can say is that second teeth are coming through, because the programme is now three years old. The Treasury team responsible, including the Paymaster General and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have had three years to get it right.
	Members of Parliament continue to receive cases of hardship and misery, generated by a scheme that we were told would solve people's problems and help them out of debt, poverty and hardship and back into work. For a third of the people involved in the scheme, who are supposedly receiving money as beneficiaries, the reverse is the caseit is creating problems and causing hardship. It hurts me to have to say this, but frankly, if the chairman of Revenue and Customs and the Treasury team responsible for the scheme cannot get it right after three years, they should move over and make way for someone who can.

Sally Keeble: A bit later in my remarks, I want to deal with an aspect of the tax credit scheme that has not been talked about much: the child care elementa particularly important point that is responsible for some of the very high levels of overpayment. Before I do so, it is important to return to the fact that the policy is basically the right one. Although everyone says, Oh yes, we agree that it is the right one, but..., we are left with the buts, which are undermining. The implication that the system is working so badly that it cannot be made to work and therefore that it must be changed is one of the things that I want to refute very strongly.
	We have a choice, and my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall) was right to press on both Opposition parties that there is a choice between flat-rate and real-time benefits. Of course, a flat-rate benefit would be easier to administer. We could just say, We know the family size, and here's a flat-rate payment. However, the real issue is what the payment should be. That is where things become problematic, because we might assume that there is an identikit family and we might give people a certain amount of money. Labour Members' suspicion is that if the Opposition ever got their hands on the system, the level would be too low.
	People are now much more familiar with working with computer systems and real-time benefits can take account of changing circumstances. In a sense, people expect the system to target their real needs much more carefully. Again, that comes back to the child care element. That is why it is so important and why my right hon. Friend was correct constantly to press the point about the flat-rate system versus the more flexible version.
	By providing flexibility, we make it possible for people to remain in work. That is fundamental not only to the fight against poverty, but to people's dignity, self-respect, standing in society and ability to support their children and to hold out the prospect of a better life for them and all the other things that people want to do for their families. In a previous incarnation, when I was the leader of an inner-London council during all the Tory recessions, I saw people on flat-rate benefits who lived on large council estates, and those benefits only served to keep them in poverty.

Tobias Ellwood: I remind the hon. Lady that her party is in power and this motion has been tabled because mistakes are being made by the Government. Does she agree that about half of those who apply for tax credits receive the wrong assessment? That is what we should be addressing, not some fictitious idea of what a future Conservative Government might do.

Sally Keeble: It is not a fictitious idea, because it relates to policy choices and what has been learned from the past to inform the future. It also relates to what happens to lone parentsunemployed women bringing up childrenand their prospects. I do not think that anyoneand that includes Labour Membershas referred to that key issue for the tax credit system.

Danny Alexander: The hon. Lady rightly sets out the objectives for the system, but major problems are caused by the high degree of error and incompetence, and they would make it worth while investigating returning to a system of fixed awards. The experience of my constituents is that it is no longer worth the trouble of engaging with the tax credits systemwhich was set up to help thembecause the incompetence has been going on for three years and they are sick of it.

Sally Keeble: The hon. Gentleman makes the fair point that if a system is constantly run down, people disengage from it. It is important therefore to ensure that the public understand that the system can make a real difference to their life chances. I accept that it is complicated, and people may need help with working their way through it. The Committee's report contains important recommendations with which, as a member of the Committee, I wholeheartedly concur. We must recognise that if we are to give people a hand up, not a hand outto use one of our old phraseswe must ensure that we provide them with the kind of support that will help them best in their present circumstances, not the circumstances in which they were last year.
	The system is important because of what it has done for women, and that is why we must get the administration of it right. I take second place to nobody in criticising the administration and the amount of fraud. The system was designed to give a real chance to people on low and average incomesand in some cases, people with fairly high earnings but large family commitmentsto get children out of poverty and to provide some dignity for women who had been kept out of work and at home on benefits for many years, and it is a scandal that it is hampered by administration problems and fraud. That is why Labour Members are so concerned about the administration and why the Committee's report has received so much attention. It is certainly an excellent report.
	Much of the ground has already been covered and other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall make only a few points. The staff have received much criticism, and when we visited them in Preston it was clear that they have thought a lot about the issues and learned a lot from doing so. Some of the managers had done superb jobs in sorting out their targeting and working out ways to deal with the administrative problems. That deserves to be recognised, and the staff should be congratulated on their work. The system is complex and people who are not used to it or to dealing with benefits of this type can find it difficult to come to terms with. Such problems need to be resolved, but it is important that we do not merely castigate the staff for what has happened.
	The report identifies various problems, but other challengessuch as the difficulty of reporting a change in circumstancesremain. The report spends a lot of time talking about how people's income can vary in-year. That is understandable when people working shifts or in temporary jobs have to adjust their hours for school holidays and so on. However, evidence gathered for the report made it clear that people's lives change. We must accept that families break up and that people find new partners. New babies get born and children grow up, moving from nursery school to their main school and then out to work.
	All those changes can have an impact on a person's tax credit claim. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced changes to the system in his Budget statement, and their implementation must take account of people's changing circumstances. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General is more familiar with the details than I am, but I think that one of the proposals is that a change in circumstances will have to be reported in one month rather than in three months. Staff must be geared up and ready to deal with such changes, and claimants must also be aware of what they have to do. They must be able to manage what can be quite a complicated process, as it is not always clear that a change in circumstances will be permanent.
	In addition, the relevant computer systems must be geared up to deal with the requirement that changes in circumstances are reported more quickly. It is important, too, that people who advise claimants understand the changes.
	The Treasury Committee also talks about the ombudsman's recommendation about an independent appeals system, and makes it clear that it wants to see a report on the practicalities involved. I hope that HMRC can look into the matter very carefully and make a report available quickly, because it is really important to ensure that a paper chase, once begun, does not proliferate.
	The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) mentioned the arguments that people can get into, and the sequence of events is familiar to all hon. Members. When a person in receipt of a tax credit award undergoes a change in circumstances, he or she is likely to say that the award was wrong in the first place. Details of the changes are fed through the system, making the first award even more wrong and rendering incorrect any award made subsequently. The problem then is that it is very difficult to alter the first award, with the result that a paper chase begins that goes on and on. It can take an inordinately long time to resolve such a problem.
	Any appeals system has to be appropriate. It must arrive at the right decision and provide proper redress, but it also has to be quite fast. It must not add to the paper chaseit is very important that the appeals system makes things better rather than worse. I hope that the HMRC report on an independent appeals system is made available to hon. Members, and that it is prepared very quickly.
	My final point has to do with child care, an element in the debate that has been overlooked so far. It is important that we remember that the flexible tax credits system recognises the cost of caring for children. It is not perfect, but for the first time ever women can claim their child care costs and go out to work.
	In the early days of the system that led to some fraud, but the new process has helped a bit. Some problems remain, such as how to deal with holidays and what mature students with children can do about their child care costs. However, it is really important that, as we move forward, we retain the recognition that a woman might need only a small amount of money in tax credits because she can earn reasonably well, but she can earn well only if all her child care costs are paid. She might need only a few pounds a week in tax credits, but she will need 100 a week or more in child care costs. I hope that that is recognised.
	I hope that it is also recognised that, because that is the case, I have constituents who have received huge overpayments because of the child care element. I am sure that other hon. Members have such constituents, too. I ask that that be looked atparticularly in any future proposals that the Treasury makesto make sure that women can get their child care costs, and also that, if mistakes are made, women do not suddenly find themselves plunged into paying large amounts of money because of miscalculations on child care, especially when child care costs sometimes do not take account of holidays and some of the difficulties that women have.
	I know that Conservative Members do not like being told about things that happened in the past. Fortunately, it is a long time since the last Tory Government. However, I remember hundreds of people being laid off work and being put on benefits in the middle of one of the worst of the Tory recessions in Birmingham. That was in the days before computersor before large-scale computers. The then Department of Health and Social Security systemall the offices in Birminghamshut down in a strike because people were overloaded. It was not just that the admin did not work; it shut down completely. For about nine months, people got nothing. That was an example of the Conservative Government administering financial support to people who were out of work because of the recession that the Conservative Government created, and who were in dire poverty. The suffering was severe, which is one reason why Labour Members think twice when they hear Conservative Members talking about benefits for people on low incomes.
	As I say, I will be second to none in criticising maladministration and fraud in the benefits system. Will my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General make sure that we have a welfare system that does not act as a kind of opium of the masses in keeping them in unemployment, but enables people to transform their lives, go out to work and have proper child care for their children, and create a much better future for their families?

Greg Clark: There is no perfect system of welfare. The system always involves choices. There is no utopia that we can ever hope to achieve. Because those choices have to be made, it is important that they should be debated properly and fully in Parliament. Those choices are fundamental to the designs of systems. There is the choice to provide incentives for people to stay in workthat extends in-work benefits up the income scale to the levels that we have. That is a choice that has to be made. We can have the simplicity of universalism in benefits, but that comes at a cost. All those questions need to be discussed fully and properly. What has been a bit disappointing in the contributions from Labour Members is how unwilling they have been to have a proper and open debate about the changes. Instead, they have defended a system that reflects some policy choices that can and should be questioned. The Select Committee report has done that.
	It is important to address three points in particular. First, there is the question of overpayments. Secondly, there is the complexity of the system and, thirdly, there is the effect of the tax credit system on low pay. When it comes to the level of overpayments, let none of us be under any illusions. The overpayments are a direct consequence of the policy. The tax credit system is engaged in bringing together two completely different policies: the tax system, which has traditionally taken a look at income on an annual basis, and the welfare system, which takes a much shorter termoften week by weeklooks at what claimants need. Needless to say, putting those two things together involves exactly the type of problems that we have seen and that are intrinsic in that system. That is why that requires debating.
	Quite reasonably, the Government have recognised the problem and increased the disregard from 2,500 a year to 25,000. No doubt that will help to solve the problem. It is, however, important that we assess whether the change represents value for money, but the Government have consistently refused to allow us to make such an assessment.
	When the disregard was set at 2,500, the Treasury was able to estimate that it would cost 800 million. When the disregard was increased tenfold to 25,000, similar figures, miraculously, could not be produced and no assessment could be givenor so we thought. When the Public Accounts Committee questioned senior officials in Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs on the matter, it emerged, after a degree of probing, that such estimates had been produced. However, presumably because it would have been inconvenient to Treasury Ministers if the figures were disclosed, the information was not put in the public domain, although we know that it is available.
	The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a well-respected think-tank that does valuable work to inform all parliamentarians about the technical aspects of the tax system, was eager to obtain the information so that it could make what, as every hon. Member would agree, would be an independent assessment of the consequences of the change, but its request was refused. HMRC sent the IFS an unbelievable letter in which it disclosed that it had information about the cost of the increased disregard, but refused, on freedom of information grounds, to give it. The letter read:
	In applying this exemption we had to balance the public interest in withholding the information against the public interest in disclosing the information.
	I have no idea what the public interest in withholding the information can be. If the Paymaster General wishes to explain it to me, I will be happy to take her intervention, but she is, perhaps conveniently, buried in her paperwork, as ever.
	We are able to make an estimate of the figure because we know that the overpayments in the most recent financial year amounted to some 1.8 billion. It is argued that the overpayments reflect several factors, of which changes to income in-year is but one, and that it is impossible to work out the situation, although calculations have been done. However, in the qualification of the annual report and accounts of the Inland Revenue, the Comptroller and Auditor General was able to make an assessment of the reasons for the overpayments. In the 2004-05 accounts, the CAG said that the
	Total overpayments for 2003/4 were mainly because family income had increased by more than the 2,500 disregard.
	In other words, the CAG, who is an unimpeachable figure, says that the main contribution to the then 2.2 billion figure, which is now 1.8 billion, was in-year changes in income. If the Paymaster General wishes to correct Sir John Bourn on the record, I will happily give her the opportunity to do so, but I see, again, that she chooses not to intervene. The matter is important. If we interpret the CAG's assessment as generously as possibly by regarding mainly as constituting half the expenditure, the relevant figure is well over 1 billion a year and could be as high as 1.8 billion.
	I said at the beginning of my speech that the welfare system involves policy choices. We should be able to debate in both Select Committee and the Chamber whether 1 billion of Government expenditure is best applied to simplifying the system in such a way, or whether, for example, we should use it to increase child benefit by 140 for each family, which would be an alternative. Ministers are disgracefully denying us the opportunity to exercise such scrutiny. Although I understand the political interest in doing such a thing, I do not see the public interest.

Sally Keeble: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Greg Clark: I will be glad to hear an explanation of the public interest in withholding the information.

Sally Keeble: If the hon. Gentleman reads the report, it works out that 30 per cent. of the overpayments are due to changes in income, roughly 30 per cent. due to changes in circumstances, and about 15 per cent. each to two other factors. That does not mean that there can then be a transfer into values. There is an interrelationship between the different elements, so the conclusion is wrong.

Greg Clark: The hon. Lady is right in saying that there are different factors. That is why I referred to the Comptroller and Auditor General, whose qualification of the accounts was based not on the number of claimantshe has no interest in thatbut on value. He said that the main contribution was from in-year changes in income. That was his assessment.
	There are two more deficiencies in the present system. The first is its complexity. We should be able to have a reasonable exchange of views on the complexity of the developing system without having to pretend that it is the best possible system for the best possible set of circumstances. The National Audit Office takes a balanced and reasonable view. In a report on the complexity of the benefits system that the PAC considered, the NAO said:
	We consider that an appropriate degree of complexity exists when there is an equilibrium between the system being complex enough to meet the needs of the wide range of different individuals in various circumstances, yet straightforward enough to run efficiently. Overall, in the National Audit Office's view, this equilibrium has not yet been reached.
	Those are the objective and independent words of the NAO. Surely Ministers should reflect on that and concede that the system is too complex and needs to be reformed so as to be more simple. If the words of Sir John Bourn do not carry much weight with Treasury Ministers, perhaps those of the Child Poverty Action Group will. Its helpful handbook on welfare benefits and tax credits has, I think, been sent to all of us, as Members of Parliament. It now runs to 1,600 pages. In this year's introduction, it says that recent
	changes...have left activists exhausted, claimants increasingly anxious about their entitlements
	we have heard that from many of my hon. Friends
	and arguably, a system more fragile and complex than ever before.
	This cannot be seen to be a system that works.
	I was concerned when the Chief Secretary seemed almost to be welcoming the ever-increasing numbers of people who are claiming tax credits. I will be the first to welcome improvements in take-upthat is to say people who are entitled to benefits taking them upbut surely it cannot be a benchmark of Government policy that more and more people coming onto state benefits should be a symptom of success. What basis of economic competitiveness is that?
	Another way of thinking of record numbers of people claiming tax credits is that 7 million working peoplerepresenting 6 million familiesare in jobs that are not productive enough to generate an income to keep themselves and their families without a top-up from the state. Of course, if they are not able to earn to that level, they need to have a top-up. They need to be helped, but we cannot congratulate ourselves that earnings are so low that more and more people every year require the intervention of the state so as to have a decent sum on which to live.
	I endorse the view of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who, in a notable lecture to the Fabian Society, recently said:
	It is a striking fact that around half of the children living in poverty today live in a household where an adult is in work.
	There are two reasons why people require these top-ups to sustain themselves. One reason is that they may not be productive enoughtheir skills may not be adequate enough to support themselves and their families. An increase in claimants for that reason is a damning indictment of what we need to do to be competitive. Again, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said:
	Whereas we today have 3.4 million unskilled jobs, it is estimated that by 2020 we will need only 600,000.
	It is extremely important that we increase skill levels within society.

Sally Keeble: The conclusion of the hon. Gentleman's argument is that it is better to be unemployed and on benefits than to be in work and on benefits. However, the tax credit system is designed to support people into work, which is why they claim when they are in work.

Greg Clark: The hon. Lady has got the wrong end of the stick. People who cannot earn enough to keep themselves deserve to be supported, but we should not congratulate ourselves, as every year, more and more people have jobs that pay so little that their earnings need to be topped up by the state. However, support should be available.
	Unusually for a Conservative Member, I endorse the campaign by the Transport and General Workers Union on low pay in the cleaning industry, in which it points out that, for example, 60 per cent. of cleaners employed in the City of London earn less than 5.50 an hour. It is unacceptable for employers who make do very well from large profits and who depend on those services to get away with poverty pay. We should not accept such behaviour, and Government Members should not accept it either. We need to look seriously at the tax credit system and its interaction with the minimum wage if we are to address the argument of the eminent academic Jonathan Bradshaw of the university of York:
	At the moment the state is playing a vital part in supporting market earnings. At no time in our history has it had to do more...The taxpayer is providing a large subsidy to low-paying employers and no doubt many are laughing all the way to their shareholders.
	In conclusion, this is such an important issue that it is disappointing that the Government have complacently defended the present position. We need to debate these things more thoroughly and positively. If my words and those of of my right hon. and hon. Friends do not carry any weight with Treasury Ministers, perhaps the words of the right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn) will do so. In March, he said that we need to
	tackle the root causes, not the symptoms. That must mean moving beyond simply correcting low wages and family poverty after the event, towards policies that spread opportunity and help people to realise their own aspirations for progress.[ Official Report, 28 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 710.]
	Conservative Members certainly share those aspirations, and I hope that when she replies to our debate, the Paymaster General will say that the Government do so, too.

Andrew Gwynne: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), given his apparent conversion to Labour's national minimum wage.
	I welcome this debate, but the House will be relieved to learn that I wish to make only a brief contribution. Tax credits have made a huge difference to a great many families in my constituency. Earlier, the hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton) bemoaned the citing of facts and statistics, and she urged us to focus on individuals. I am happy to do so, because she reminded me that in the last general election campaign, I ran a street stall on Denton market ground on a Sunday morning. A young mother came up to me and said, Are you Labour? Given her tone, I hesitated to reply, but I said, Yes. She said, That's okay, because your lot have made a real difference to my life. You have done so much for me and my family. The tax credits have really made a difference, and have enabled me to go out and find a job.
	That is the hidden success of the Government's tax credit system. Quite simply, tax credits have made work pay, and they have helped to support families financially. As the Minister said, they have helped us to lift 700,000 children out of relative poverty, which is good news that should be applauded. Yes, some of my constituents have experienced problems, and when things go wrong they often go very wrong indeed, which causes those families great concern. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall) said, our right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and others have received anecdotal evidence of fewer tax credit problems than in earlier years. Having worked in my predecessor's constituency office, and having dealt with many of those tax credit problems myself, I can confirm that there has been a substantial reduction in cases, although there are still some issues that need to be resolved. I have every confidence that they will be.
	I welcome the changes being put in place by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, which will alleviate some of the problems in the system, not least with the increase in the disregard for earnings between one tax year and the next from 2,500 to 25,000. That will reduce the overpayments substantially once the measure is fully implemented, as has been acknowledged by speakers in all parts of the House. People whose circumstances have changed and who currently get caught up in the system should not get caught up in future. That is surely to be welcomed.
	I am working to resolve the cases that my constituents have brought to me, and I will continue to do so, as I am sure other hon. Members will do. I re-emphasise what tax credits mean to many people. Tax credits benefit 6 million families. In my constituency, Denton and Reddish, that amounts to 7,600 families in receipt of family tax credit and 12,600 in receipt of child tax credit. Those are often lower paid families who struggled to survive under the Conservative Government.
	For all the difficulties that there were and are in the system, that extra money is making a fantastic difference to a great many families in Denton and Reddish and throughout the country. It is most certainly not the shambles that the hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) described. Yes, let us iron out the problems, but let us also be proud of this good policya redistributive policy, a Labour policy and one that is lifting families out of poverty and giving people opportunities to secure work. I am proud of that and I want to see those principles continue into the future.
	Despite the apparent conversion today of those on the Opposition Front Bench, I do not
	long for a Chancellor who...introduces a Budget which abolishes all of Brown's endless reliefs and credits,
	as the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) does. That would be a retrograde step and it would be a disaster for that young mum on Denton market and thousands like her in Denton and Reddish, Greater Manchester and throughout the country.

Tobias Ellwood: It will take me just three minutes to get my views across in this interesting debate. I am sad that the Chancellor is not present to hear some of the comments, and that it has taken the Conservatives to bring the issues to the fore. We listened with interest to the Chief Secretary, but one can always tell when a Minister is on the back foot. Rather than answer the questions put to him by the shadow Chancellor, the hon. Gentleman went on to attack what a Conservative Government might or might not do in the future. He failed to explain why about half of those who apply for tax credits do not receive the correct amount. He failed to explain why the overpayment threshold has been changed from 2,500 and increased tenfold to 25,000, and the consequences of that to the taxpayer. On a personal note, he also failed to explain why his own constituency is among those that fare worst in the tables published last week.
	We have a benefits system that is getting worse, not better, getting more complicated, not simpler, and costing more, not less. It has taken the Conservatives to bring the matter to the Floor of the House. It is interesting that Mr. Speaker decided to throw out the amendments to the motion because they were not worthy. We wanted to discuss issues of overpayment, fraud and incompetence in the administration of the tax system. We wanted the Chancellor to reply, since he created the system in the first place, but he is not here.
	In their amendment the Government usually cite a great many statistics. I am glad to hear that some of the 15 billion that is being spent on the tax system is going to some places, but with just under half the people not getting the right amount, there are clearly questions to be answered. They were not answered today. I hope that the shadow Chancellor will have the wisdom to call another debate when the Chancellor can fit it into his diary and be present in the Chamber. However, the Government have been forced in their amendment, which has been thrown out, to acknowledge that there are IT problems and that there have been administration cock-ups, and to acknowledge the need for more changes yet again in a system that the Chancellor created.
	We have had enough renaming, rebranding and restructuring. We need a radical overhaul of the tax system, with a programme that simplifies it to its core, that is revenue neutral and that reduces the gap between the cost of paying a tax and the amount of tax collected. Until we go down that road, more and more of the 15 billion that has been spent every year will be wasted.

Mark Francois: It is a genuine pleasure to sum up the debate today for Her Majesty's Opposition and to highlight what has become the shambles of the tax credits system as administered by the Government. The system now costs some 16 billion a year, or the equivalent of 5p on the standard rate of income tax. It incorporates some 6 million families, of which some 2 million were overpaid in 2004-05, while at the same time just under 1 million families were underpaid. In other words, nearly half of all the payments in the entire system were incorrect. I therefore welcome the Chief Secretary's admission that the system has serious problems, and his acceptance this afternoon that there is now a consensus that tax credits should be retained. It was important that the Government accepted that there was a consensus to retain them, and we welcome that.
	However, the tax credits system, as it is currently configured, is seriously flawed. It is prone to fraud and it is also far too complicated, to the extent that many of the claimants who use it do not fully understand what they are claiming, many of the staff who administer it do not really comprehend it properly, and it is all based around a computer system that itself is highly unreliable, as was brought out clearly in the typically punchy contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale). That serves only to compound the mistakes in the system itself.
	The Government's defence, as outlined in their hurried written statement that was rushed out on Monday, is essentially that the package of remedial measures announced in the December pre-Budget report will put things right. But six months on, they still refuse to tell the House what the package will really cost, and even then, they admit that this will reduce the overpayments by only a third, so well over 1 million families will still be overpaid even when the package is fully up and running. The PBR package does not address the problems at the heart of the current systemnamely, its excessive complexity and its dependence on unreliable information technology.  [Interruption.] The Chief Secretary has returned just in time for me to welcome his acknowledgement of our consensus. In effect, the PBR package is an attempt to place a sticking plaster over what has become a gaping wound.
	Since the new, and supposedly more flexible, system was introduced in 2003, a series of independent reports has subsequently criticised the operation of the Chancellor's system. In June 2005, after receiving thousands of individual complaints about the new system, the parliamentary ombudsman produced a report that concluded:
	A review of all the cases referred to the Ombudsman shows that the greatest difficulties are suffered by the core group that the tax credit system is aimed at helping, mainly families on low incomes.
	In September 2005, the Public Accounts Committee looked at the system and attacked its complexity. It concluded:
	The Government intended the new tax credits to provide a system that was simple for people to understand and to administer. In practice, many people have found the scheme difficult to understand. Many have complained to the Inland Revenue about the system and the frustration and misery it has caused to claimants.
	We heard that reflected on both sides of the House in our debate this afternoon.
	In January 2006, after reviewing the ombudsman's findings, the Public Administration Committee delivered the following damning verdict on the IT system, which underlines the current tax credits system. It said:
	We are concerned that the IT system which is supposed to enable an efficient delivery of the scheme has in fact been a root cause, first of creating some of the problems which have led to the criticism and complaints about the scheme and then of acting as a barrier to resolving them quickly.
	Then, in April 2006, we had a scathing report by the Public Accounts Committee that looked at the fraud and errors in the system, including overpayments that totalled 1.8 billion in 2004-05. It concluded:
	The Department does not have reliable or up to date information on levels of claimant error and fraud in tax credits. The absence of this information and its analysis seriously impairs the Department's management of the schemes and its ability to safeguard taxpayers' money.
	Despite that, Ministers at all levels in the Treasury keep trying to insist in the media that the system is working well.
	Can the Paymaster General tell us the true extent of the fraud that is now inherent in the tax credits system? We were promised those figures in the springlet us have them now. Picking up on what my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) cleverly pointed out, we still have not had the cost of the tenfold increase in the disregard, and we are now told that it is not in the public interest to tell us, as elected Members of Parliament, what that figure is. Will the Paymaster General tell us why?
	Only yesterday we had, as the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall) said, a very objective report from the Treasury Committee, which looked in great detail at the administration of the system and concluded:
	It is obvious to us that the Paymaster General's account makes no reference to causes of overpayments which have arisen as a consequence of the Department's own processesfor example official error and IT systems error. Rather, the Paymaster General has referred only to those causes of overpayments which can be attributed to claimant error or omission, or to the design of the tax credits regime, or a combination of both.
	All these critical reports, in just two years, represent a litany of failure, and it is a failure lodged firmly on the doorstep of No. 11 Downing street.
	There is also a growing consensus among the voluntary sector that the current system does not work properly. As we have heard, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureauxcitizens advice bureaux now advise tax credit claimants as a major part of their work loadprovided a frank commentary on the problems in the system:
	Last year Citizens Advice Bureaux across the UK advised on around 150,000 tax credit problems. CAB experience is that the recovery of overpayments has caused significant hardship to many families as payments have stopped without warning or explanation.
	Whereas, for those who read  The Guardian, the Reverend Paul Nicholas, chairman of the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, was quoted in the paper this week as follows:
	Enforcement is driven by computers that have no means of identifying the illiterate, blind, disabled, mentally or chronically ill
	and in some cases, even dead. He concludes that
	an overpayment of tax credits can lead to a downward spiral of a family's fortunes into a morass of debt.
	Even the Fabian Society has acknowledged that the system is not working. In its report, Narrowing the Gap, issued earlier this year, it admitted that the system had faults and that tax credits were associated with complexity and administrative problems. Now it has a sleeper within the Treasury arguing that agenda, as the report was launched by none other than the Economic Secretaryand where is he?
	It needs to be remembered that this system was established to assist people on low incomes. In many cases, it is doing precisely the opposite. It needs to be reformed in order to continue to provide help to people who need it but without driving them to distraction in the process. As far as the current configuration of tax credits is concerned, the Treasury is shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic, with the Economic Secretary particularly desperate to get one before they all disappear.
	Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that the architect of this system is the Chancellor himself, who famously said in the mid-1990s that he wanted to abolish means-testing. Yet the current system is the apotheosis of that concept, against which there is now an overwhelming consensus that it needs to be reformed. The Prime Minister referred at Prime Minister's questions earlier this afternoon to: Working families tax credit, which makes work pay for people.
	Working families tax credit was abolished three years ago. That is the old system. We are debating the new one. The Chancellor has created a system that is so complicated that even the Prime Minister does not understand it, so what hope is there for a single mother, who perhaps has not had a strong financial education, living on a run-down council estate struggling to fill in the forms and deal with the bureaucracy that the Select Committee identified?
	The greatest shame is that the system was the Chancellor's personal creation. It was his pet project above all others. Yet when the day came for him to be held to account, what did the iron Chancellor do? He ran away. Unusually, the Government's amendment has not been selected, so hon. Members have a clear choice. They can put up with the shambles that is the current system, and go along with the fact that the Chancellor invented it but would not come and defend it, or they can join us in the Lobby and protest against a system that drives ordinary working families to distraction. I hope that they will do the latter.

Dawn Primarolo: We have had another interesting debate on tax credits. As always, the Conservatives miss the pointabout tackling child poverty, helping those with volatile incomes and helping people into work.
	I welcome the Treasury Committee report and congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Mr. McFall), not only on steering through that helpful contribution to the general debate, but on presenting the outstanding issues so comprehensively and in such a considered way today.
	The debate divided into two halves. The first dealt with administration and the second considered a flexible systemthe tax credit system as it is nowversus a fixed system. I shall revert to those points later.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire specifically mentioned the pause or the 30 days and the appeals process. I shall respond to those points shortly. He also made it clear that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs must put the needs of the claimants first. I agree with him and the Committee. He also said that there must be a shift in the fundamental culture of HMRC if tax credits are to be a success. I agree with him about that and so does the Department, as the report acknowledges.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble) congratulated the staff on their commitment and recognition of the challenges and the changes that they needed to make.
	The hon. Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) made several things absolutely clear but I shall pick on one of them. He said that the system was about people. I could not agree more. He knows that I have made it clear both in private meetings and in exchanges across the Floor that it is crucial to do what needs to be done to take forward a basically sound policy and ensure that its administration is right.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North also highlighted the challenges that remained to be met of the changing circumstances that people experience in their lives and the accuracy and swiftness of the Department's response. She made important points about child care, to which I want to refer.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) echoed the point about the important contribution that tax credits have made in his constituency and in constituencies throughout the country.
	Let us be clear: the tax credits deliver three key achievements. They improve incentives to work, they reduce tax on low to middle income families, they help dramatically to reduce child poverty and they have played a major role in helping people into work and to move up the employment ladder, ensuring that work pays over benefits.
	I am not surprised that a party that presided over doubling child poverty when in power attaches so little credit to those achievements. When we seek a consensus in the Chamberthe consensus to which my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire referredit is to get all Opposition parties to commit themselves to the principle of eradicating child poverty and the practical means of achieving that. Every time the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats were challenged by Labour Members this afternoon, they were unable to say how they would match the huge contribution that tax credits have made to this important debate.
	Let us remind ourselves of that contribution. A couple with two children moving into full-time work on the national minimum wage will be 41 a week better off, compared with 34 in 1997. A lone parentand I can assure hon. Members that they can read and writewith two children moving into full-time work on the national minimum wage will be 76 a week better off, compared with 54 in 1997. A single person without children moving into full-time work on the national minimum wage will be 58 a week better off, compared with 39 a week in 1997.
	Tax credits are central to reducing the tax on low and middle-income families, as the recent OECD study shows. The tax paid by a couple with two children earning 21,000 a year has fallen from 17.3 per cent. of gross earnings in 1997 to 9.8 per cent. in 2004. That is the lowest rate in any G7 country. In the UK, a single-earner family with two children can now earn just under two thirds of the average wage before they start to pay any tax. Those are the benefits of tax credits. That is the contribution that is being made by a policy that the Treasury Committee unanimously agreed in principle was the right way to proceed. It has reduced poverty and raised children out of living on absolute low incomes.
	Are families responding to this in a positive way? We have only to look at the take-up figures to see the answer. In the first year, 93 per cent. of families on an annual income below 10,000that is low pay by any definitionclaimed their entitlement, compared with 50 per cent. in the early years of family income supplement, and 57 per cent. for family credit.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire asked about appeals and about the pause. On the latter point, the Department entirely supports in principle the ombudsman's recommendation to give taxpayers notice before commencing recoverythe so-called 30 daysand we are considering how we can integrate such a pause into the information technology system without jeopardising it. On appeals, we are exploring with the adjudicator's office the feasibility of introducing a fast-track process to provide claimants with the timely, accurate response that my right hon. Friend described. We have done that in close consultation with the ombudsman, who circulated a letter to every Member of this House on 27 March 2006 stating:
	Since I published that report, my staff and I have had regular discussions at senior level with staff in the Revenue, including the Tax Credit Office and the Adjudicator's Office.
	Those matters are being taken forward.
	The key objective in tackling poverty is to consider how the needs of familiesespecially low-income familieschange, and how we can respond to those changes. We know that their incomes are volatile. More than a quarter of households analysed by Professor John Hills had erratic and high levels of income changes. The statistics for tax credits show that 1 million families saw their income fall between 2003 and 2004, and 700,000 of them would have been worse off under a fixed system. We would have to bear that in mind if we went back to a fixed award system. They would not have received the extra money that tax credits provide for them. We need that flexibility, and of course that means that there sometimes has to be an end of year adjustment. Let us keep this in perspective, however. Fifty-four per cent. of the overpayments are less than 500, and 31 per cent. are less than 200.
	In 1997, only 800,000 families received family credit; 6 million now receive tax credits. In 1997, only 50 per cent. take-up was achieved; now take-up is 93 per cent. among the poorest families. Today the income tax liability of 3 million families has been effectively wiped out by tax credits which ensure that they can use their money to spend on their families.
	The consensus that we seek today is one that includes the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. We seek a commitment to the eradication of child poverty, a commitment to recognising that people have volatile incomes, and a commitment to willing the means. Today the Conservatives failed in that regard. That is no surprise in the case of a party that presided over child poverty in the 1990s.
	 Question put,
	 The House proceeded to a Division.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.

The House having divided: Ayes 218, Noes 287.

Question accordingly negatived.

Volunteers and Carers

Alistair Burt: I beg to move,
	That this House takes note of the immense contribution to society made by those honoured during the recent Volunteers Week and forthcoming Carers Week; recognises and values the significant economic and social benefits resulting from the work of volunteers and carers, often performed in difficult circumstances requiring the most selfless qualities; further notes the need to ensure that the fewest possible barriers are placed before those wanting to volunteer and act as carers; believes that encouragement should be given to all, especially the young, to consider volunteering as a contribution to the welfare of a healthy society; and expresses its thanks to all those who act as role models for volunteering and caring.
	I am delighted to have the privilege of leading this afternoon's debate on a matter close to the heart of virtually every Member. Its purpose is to honour those involved in volunteering and caring in society by using mainstream time on the Floor of the House to demonstrate how important their contribution is to all hon. Members. We have therefore taken the opportunity offered by volunteers week and carers week to do precisely that. We want to recognise the immense, varied and significant contribution made by individuals throughout the country who participate in volunteering and caring and to register the extent of their commitment and the contribution that they make.
	I trust that we can explore current issues facing volunteering and caring, consider the barriers that still need to be overcome to make the most effective use of people and their time and examine how life can be made easier for those involved. Finally, I hope that we can look to the future and raise issues that the recently announced Commission on the Future of Volunteering will examine over the next 12 months. I have little doubt that the debate will be well informed by all hon. Members and that we will hear about the personal experiences of some of the remarkable people we have met who are involved in these activities. I intend to concentrate on volunteering, leaving my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) to talk in greater detail about the work of carers when he winds up the debate.
	There is no typical volunteer in this country. People who give up their time to help others come from all sections of the community, are of all ages and come from all cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Despite the dreadful story in the newspapers this morning of the poor child left calling for help in the middle of the road after being struck by a car, the instinct to help one's neighbour is one of the deepest human ones imaginable.
	Members of Parliament have many privileges, as journalists are frequently keen to remind us, but one of the privileges rarely reported is the opportunity that we have to observe some of the finer instincts of members of our community. A typical MP's diary of time spent in the constituency will reveal visits to those involved in some of the most selfless activities, which all too rarely command national headlines. Our local newspapers make an excellent, if too often unsung, contribution, and often provide the recognition necessary to enable a community to appreciate that the picture of national collapsean inference too often drawn from some appalling incidentis not the reality of life for everyone.
	Before we consider individual stories, let us gain some sense of how important the voluntary sector is to this country. I am indebted to the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and Stuart Etherington for their statistical analysis and work on this matter. The latest information available shows that the voluntary and community sector, as best it can be defined, has an income of more than 26 billion. Its work force is sizeable, at some 600,000, but the number who volunteerdefined as giving unpaid help through groups, clubs and organisations to benefit other people or the environmentis staggering. Some 29 per cent. of our community take part in formal volunteering at least once a month and 44 per cent. at least once a year. Half of our population has volunteered, formally or informally, at least once a month, which is equivalent to more than 20 million people in England and Wales.

Derek Conway: My hon. Friend's support for the voluntary sector is renowned in the House and I am delighted that he is opening the debate. Will he recall that volunteers in the animal welfare sectorespecially the 10,000 who do so for the organisation to which I am connected, Cats Protectionmake a commitment not once a week or once a month but, because they are dealing with live animals, every day? Those who volunteer to help animals, especially cats and dogs, make a seven-day-a-week commitment, and it is all the more remarkable for it.

Alistair Burt: In a typically feline intervention, my hon. Friend uses his personal knowledge, as many other hon. Members will do in this debate, to highlight another corner of national life in which volunteers and carers are involved. It is remarkable that hardly any facet of our national and community life does not involve selfless giving by people, and my hon. Friend's valuable work and expertise in his area is recognised. It is right for him to say what he said.

Andy Reed: I do not wish to diminish the work done by a wide variety of organisations, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will mention many of them, but will he recognise that 26 per cent. of all volunteers work in sport? Some 6 million people volunteer in sport regularly, and I speak with a slight vested interest as chair of the National Strategic Partnership for Volunteering in Sport, which brings them all together. The hon. Gentleman could also give us some indication of his own prowess at sport with his run earlier today in the Westminster mile.

Alistair Burt: Unaccustomed as I am to talking of my activities in the parliamentary football team or other sports, I nevertheless seem to recall that I was a minute ahead of the hon. Gentleman this afternoon, in an event graced again by an astonishing performance by the Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform, the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr. Murphy), who did the mile for Sport Relief in 5 minutes and 35 secondsan extremely creditable performance.
	Colleagues will know from their constituency work that remarkable things can be done with sport. It touches all parts of society, including the most needy people. Time given up for sport is exceptionally valuable, but that brings us to one of the problems of modern life. People used to live and work in more or less the same area, finishing work at a reasonable time and going home for tea at 5 o'clock. They were therefore able to go out and support a sports club or train a team in the evening. These days, however, people work further away and get home much later. They are more tired and more committed to their work, so it is harder for them to offer the support for sport that the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed) mentioned. We should pay a special tribute to those who work with youngsters in sports teams and who thus make an immense contribution.

Nigel Evans: My hon. Friend has visited my constituency several times, and knows that it is a rural area that does not have as many sporting facilities as other places. However, we are rich in mums and dads and other volunteers prepared to give up their time in the middle of the week and at weekends, in all sorts of weather. I am thinking of George Hibbert of the Clitheroe Wolves, who helps more than 450 young boys and girls to play football on a regular basis, and of Farouk Hussain, who gives up his time in the middle of the week to help youngsters play cricket. Without such people, young people in rural areas would not have the same opportunity to play sport.

Alistair Burt: My hon. Friend is right. He makes the point that voluntary activity to help disadvantaged people is not confined to urban areas but is also effective in rural areas. He mentions the time commitment required of those who work and train with youngsters in the way described by the hon. Member for Loughborough. I pay tribute to the people in my hon. Friend's constituency who devote so much time to thatand especially to those who are working to build up yet another wonderful Lancashire cricket team that will win more trophies.
	What is the economic worth of voluntary activity, quite apart from the personal and social benefits that it confers? People who volunteer formally tend to spend about eight hours a month on voluntary work. That adds up to 1.9 billion hours of workabout the same as that done by 1 million full-time workers. At the national average wage, that contribution is worth 22 billion a year.
	There is no possibility that that amount of effort could be taken over by the state or people in the paid sector. It could not be afforded, so the voluntary contribution that people make constitutes an exceptional addition to this country's national life. We should all salute and celebrate it.

Gary Streeter: My hon. Friend has set out the undoubted economic benefit accruing from voluntary work, but does he agree that the long-term, one-on-one personal care devoted to some of the most vulnerable people in our society by people in the voluntary sectorincluding but not exclusively those in the faith communities could never be replicated by the state? The voluntary sector provides a great saving, but the quality of the care that is given could never be delivered by the state, no matter how well it was intended. Is not that the real benefit of what the voluntary sector provides?

Alistair Burt: There are some remarkable examples of the personal care provided by people in both the voluntary and state sectors. Those of our public sector workers who work with the most distressed individuals make a substantial contribution, but there is something special about people who do something that is not part of their job. Volunteering adds an extra dimension to their lives, as we have all seen.
	For two years in the 1990s, I had the great honour to be the Minister with responsibility for people with disabilities. In that role, I came into contact with some exceptional people. I met people struggling with disabilities and overcoming circumstances that would be unimaginable to most of us, and I also met their carers, who were prepared to put in an extraordinary amount of time. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) is absolutely right to recognise the contribution that such people make.
	I have mentioned the economic impact of those who work in the voluntary sectors, but I now turn to carers specifically. About 6 million people in the UK look after someone who is frail, sick or disabled. The care that they provide is unpaid. Many do not identify themselves as carers because the care that they give is to a family member. Three in five of us will become a carer at some stage in our lifetime and 301,000 people are becoming carers each year. If each carer worked for 20 hours a week1.25 million carers currently work for more than 50 hours a week and the Department of Health estimates that more than 400,000 carers combine a full-time job with more than 20 hours of caring a weekthat collective output would dwarf the NHS's 1 million-strong work force. That is how much we depend on our extraordinary carers.

Michael Wills: Everybody in the House shares the sentiments that are being expressed on both sides of the House. I certainly agree with the hon. Member for South-West Devon (Mr. Streeter) about the special nature of voluntary care, but I hope that the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) agrees that it is important to remember that people who work in the public services as a job also give unparalleled care, dedication and service.

Alistair Burt: Absolutely. I hope that I made that clear when I responded to my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Devon. There should not be any sense of competition. We know that a number of people feel a calling to work in the public service. Some of us do that through politics, and we all know people in our constituencies who do it, whether in the health service, teaching or care. Some people feel called to give their lives in an extraordinary way and do so through their work; some people, because they work in a different sector, give their lives in a different way. There is no sense of competition.
	That builds to an extraordinary national sense. We are talking about something that makes us the country that we are. That is why the story in the newspaper this morning was so shocking. It goes against everything in all our natures, and in the natures of the vast majority of people we come across, that someone in distress could be left. That still makes one stop and think when one travels abroad to a country where the extent of poverty is so great and the cheapness of human life is rather greater. One sees children in some degree of agony being left on the side of the road because no one can afford to care. That should not happen here. We build into our national life that sense of people being involvedeither through their working lives or their voluntary lives.

Dari Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman add to the story that he has outlined at the Dispatch Box this afternoon the fact that the little girl in question was hit and the hit-and-run driver could not be bothered to stop? That is despicable beyond words. We do not want to believe that that type of behaviour could take place in Great Britain today.

Alistair Burt: It is exactly as the hon. Lady says. It is still a sign of hope that the national reaction has been so intense and that we all recognise that behaviour as abhorrent. The worry is that, over the years, experience has tended to show that a dreadful story one year might become commonplace the next. We are all striving to avoid that.
	I know that a number of Members will seek to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to talk about people in their constituency or their experiences of volunteering with others, so that the House can get a flavour of what is behind the statistics. Volunteers week has been taken up by colleagues on this side of the Houseas I am sure that it has been on the other sideas a particular opportunity to take part in or support voluntary activities. My colleagues have been involved in quite a range of activities. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) has been helping West Norfolk Disability Information Service. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) is visiting her Sure Start project in Penge to catch up on progress. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Mitchell) sent round a helpful note of international development organisations that were looking for support and he is contributing some time. My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) has volunteered to help FARM-Africa. Colleagues have done a range of things.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), my boss, has given me information about supporting a trip to Germany by a football teamthis one supported by newspapersfrom the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust, which comprises those with mental health difficulties. They are playing in Germany in a round-robin tournament that involves other teams comprising fans supporting Germany or England. My hon. Friend lent a hand when some of that squad showed the giant banner that they have created in this country, which they intend to give to their German hosts. All of us in this place could come up with equally interesting stories and I hope that we do.

Philip Davies: May I highlight another important benefit of volunteering? I spent Sunday afternoon helping on the Shipley Glen tramway in my constituency, which is an important part of the heritage in our part of the world. It is run exclusively by volunteers and would close without them. Does my hon. Friend agree that volunteers play a vital role in preserving and highlighting important aspects of our local heritage in all our constituencies that would otherwise be lost?

Alistair Burt: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend and he is right to bring that example to the attention of the House. Those of us who know west Yorkshire are aware of how important such a contribution can be. Other hon. Members will have further examples.

Bob Spink: My hon. Friend has not mentioned this, but I spent my weekend finding good homes for well over 100 teddy bears on behalf of Barnado's. Is he aware of the MPs heroes event of the hon. Member for High Peak (Tom Levitt), which is being organised by the Experience Corps? The event will be held here on 27 June to honour those in our constituencies who do good work as volunteers, many of whom are elderly. Those people represent the British spirit and culture. However, is my hon. Friend also aware of the great problem that Members have in choosing one individual to receive the award as a hero from so many worthy, deserving causes? Did other hon. Members do what I did and ask their local paper to do that for them?

Alistair Burt: My hon. Friend's expertise with his local newspapers is well known, especially by hon. Members who attend the end-of-term Adjournment debates, when he regularly wins the prize for naming the most constituents and linking them with his local papers. He makes a fair point about the difficulties that we have when choosing from among the causes that we are asked to support.
	As far as my experience of support volunteering week is concernedI raise this as an example of something in which we are all involvedI express my thanks to Gary Bishop, who is a church leader in Openshaw, Manchester, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd). Gary is involved in the Eden project, which is a Christian-based initiative that has been operating in Manchester for several years. The project is especially extraordinary because it has asked young people to commit up to five years of their lives to live and work in some of the most deprived communities in the city. That enables them to become part of the community so that they can stimulate and support the personal and human development that is often necessary in places where there has been little family stability and where hopes and aspirations can be low, with self-esteem lower still.
	The name of Bob Holman is known to many hon. Members because of his work on poverty. He identified that one of the key features of estates in difficulty is that when anyone gets a job or tries to improve themselves, they move out of the estate, thus depriving it of natural community leaders and people who might provide stability and focus for others. His life of commitment in Easterhouse in Glasgow has been the inspiration for many, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), whose work on social justice is proving to be a significant contribution to politics.
	Members of the Eden project are working in Manchester in much the same way. Two of the estates in the area are classified as the 11th and 12th most deprived areas out of the 32,482 in the United Kingdom. Through a series of projectsincluding supporting mothers and children, home visiting, parents survival and family intervention, working with youths in clubs and on the streets, and providing after-school clubs, Sunday supper clubs and other opportunitiesthe Eden project and those who work with it are putting their time and effort into unglamorous and difficult work. It can be harder to ask volunteers to give their time to some projects than others. There are six staff, but 30 volunteers. Each of their stories is inspirational, but they would acknowledge that they are only representative of many more people working throughout the country.
	Pete had the call to move from Leicester to Manchester to be involved in the community. He works in a Sure Start project and gives spare time to the community. Hannah is married to Gary. She came to Manchester, where she qualified as a nurse. Her daily work is as a district nurse in the area of need, but she still finds time to volunteer as a family support worker, when she works mostly with people with drug or alcohol misuse problems.
	Unlike those who have moved from other areas to Manchester, Sinead, at 18, has always lived in the community. She got involved with Eden when it began to work with her and her friends, and now she is qualified as a nursery nurse, but spends extra time volunteering with families and children in the community.
	Shannon, at 15, is even younger and is still at school, yet she has learned that she has a gift for working with and leading other youngsters in the area. I think that the project, and the work being done by Andy Hawthorn and others in Manchester, is remarkable, given the commitment that they have shown in becoming embedded in an area.
	What has brought these volunteers to work in that place is no different from what has brought others to work in other areasthey recognise the need to help others. At the same time, they say how much they themselves have grown and developed through contributing voluntarily: getting involved with a simple and often repeated statement. They aim to ensure that their work is sustainable. Being able to lead youngsters such as Shannon and Sinead into positions of responsibility is a key objective. It is not merely that an elastoplast is being applied to the wound. These volunteers are participating in long-term care and recovery.
	Although the multiple problems that the estate and those who live on it may face can be daunting at times, volunteers gain strength from working with each other and supporting each other through difficult times. I suspect that that is a common feature among those who work in difficult areas of society.

Andy Reed: I have also visited the Eden project. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that one of the project's most impressive points is that unlike some of us who volunteerI help with my local Beavers group; we go in, we do it and we go awaythe commitment shown by the volunteers whom we are talking about is that they live in the communities in which they aim to serve. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should try to replicate such a model as far as possible? It is not something that we can force, but would not it be great if the hope that such Christian groups have fostered in being part of the communities in which they serve could be models for the future?

Alistair Burt: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The commitment shown is extraordinary. The number of people who can make such a commitment is limited, but there is no doubt about what these people provide by physically being present in an area and staying in it. Those who live in some of the most difficult places in our society get used to seeing other people for a short period. A social worker moves on; someone who is trusted takes a different job. There is nothing wrong with that, but the more that people can stay and be consistently identified as points of stability in difficult areas, the better. If more projects can see that as a model, that will make a tremendous contribution.

Patrick Hall: The hon. Gentleman has referred to some young people involved in volunteering. Is that not an important point to be made in the debate? So much media coverage of young people is focused on antisocial behaviour, hoodies and all the associated problems. I acknowledge that these problems exist, but would it not be appropriate to have a more balanced view of young people, so many of whom, especially through school, perhaps, work hard to raise money and raise the profile of many issues? For example, in Bedfordshire we know of the tsunami appeal, Work Africa, African Children and teaching and work on AIDS. Is not that an important aspect of volunteering? Young people can involve themselves in thinking beyond their immediate needs and wants and take on board the needs and wants of others.

Alistair Burt: The hon. Gentleman correctly identifies one of the privileges that we have that all too often others do not. We are lucky in that we see many youngstersgood youngsters in our communitywho far outweigh the number of those who cause difficulties. We are lucky enough to see them at work. I pay tribute to our local newspapers, which tend to highlight good youngsters rather more than national newspapers. It is always easy to criticise and to pick up the things that go wrong. Nationally, to value our youngsters who are working so hard, would do us all a great deal of good.

David Taylor: Right hon. and hon. Members often pay lip service in Treasury questions to a light-touch approach to regulation, monitoring and inspection of small and medium-sized enterprises for fear of stifling initiative. Is there not strong power in the voluntary sector as well, where legislators should step in with great reluctance, ensuring proportionate protection for children and others involved in voluntary bodies through the Criminal Records Bureau and other bodies? Is there not a risk that we can stifle community spirit by excessive interference and involvement from the centre?

Alistair Burt: The telepathy between good friends and near neighbours has worked again. The hon. Gentleman anticipates the next section of my speech, which will deal with some of the barriers and problems that affect those who volunteer. He is right to raise the issue and I shall now focus on it. I say a final thank you to those who I spent time with on Sunday and Monday, to the mums and toddlers' clubs, to Nicky who reintroduced me to Play-Doh after many years of absence, as my own children have grown up. I thank all of those people in that community as an example of those who are doing so much.
	As the hon. Gentleman has just said, there are barriers to volunteering. I shall touch on them briefly, as time is short. Surprisingly, one of those barriers is disagreement about the value of volunteering, as not everyone believes in the importance of volunteering. The NCVO's Vision for the Future, which was published in September 2005, said that in many cases volunteers have accepted the role of junior partner when, in fact, they should have been prepared to make their case more strongly. It said:
	We have a tendency to undervalue ourselves, particularly our value to government. If we genuinely believe that we should have a voice on the biggest issues facing our society then we need to have the courage of our convictions. We need to break through the boundaries that others place around us.
	We do not undervalue the sector, and it is important that we ensure that volunteering is not considered an amateur pursuit. People who volunteer should be proud to do so. They deserve our respect, and our debate should highlight that.
	Regulation and bureaucracy are more difficult problems. The delicate issue of checks by the Criminal Records Bureau gives rise to a clash of principles, as no one would wish volunteers with access to some of the most personal aspects of people's lives to misuse that confidence. People who rely on the services of volunteers should be sure about them, and a cloud of suspicion should not hang over them. CRB checks provide clearance, but the bureaucracy involved is sometimes overbearing. Many volunteering organisations do not know when or why they need to check volunteers, or when they do not need to do so.
	There are different levels of CRB checks, and it is not always certain which level is necessary. My wife is not an untypical example: she has three separate CRB clearancestwo at a high level, and one at a lower level. She chairs the Bedford branch of Home Startan excellent scheme that assists vulnerable families nationwideas well as working in the local church and at a school with children. A total of 100 has been spent on obtaining those clearances. That expenditure is multiplied for volunteers throughout the country, but it could be used for other purposes. At least two of the checks on my wife were unnecessary, and there should be a platform of check on which to build if someone needs to move from a lower-level clearance to a higher-level one. The cost and the obscure nature of the checks are a barrier to volunteers and voluntary groups. They are a barrier, too, to developing projects that involve contact with vulnerable groups.
	That problem, among others, was picked up by the Better Regulation Task Force in its report of November 2005, Better Regulations for Civil Society Making Life Easier for Those Who Help Others. Its seventh recommendation dealt specifically with the CRB checks, and I should be grateful if Ministers told us, either in response to my opening contribution or at the end of the debate, whether we can expect an explanation for the slow progress in responding to those recommendations. I have been in touch with the Better Regulation Commission, which is disappointed by the time it has taken to receive a response. We all appreciate that the Home Office is under pressure, but it would be helpful to reform CRB checks and implement the recommendations of the taskforce, so we would appreciate a progress report.

Graham Stuart: My hon. Friend's remarks on the CRB checks are timely, as a few days ago I received a letter from a constituent who recently was subject to seven separate checks. That is not unusual, as many volunteers volunteer for many organisations, so any steps that can be taken to ensure that that needless duplication is ended would be welcome.

Alistair Burt: My hon. Friend is quite right. I cannot foresee any objections to his proposalit is simply a matter of streamlining the system and making sure that each individual has a single reference number so that checks are carried through from one voluntary role to another. If they need to move up a level, they should be able to do so. The problem that my hon. Friend highlighted has been experienced by other people, so we must deal with it.
	Closely related to issues opened up by the problem of CRB checks is the general culture of risk aversion, which now affects many organisations working with the public. In an excellent speech last year, Justin Davis Smith, the deputy chief executive of Volunteering England, addressed the problem directly. He said that
	we must avoid the temptation to overstate the case, but the warning signs are there...a volunteer movement without risk is a contradiction in terms and one not worth having.
	Volunteering England surveyed various organisations about the issue of whether compensation culture was a myth or reality. Nine in 10 voluntary organisations believed that the UK had developed a compensation culture.
	Not surprisingly,
	Justin Davis Smith continues,
	given this belief in the shift towards a compensation culture, a majority of organisationssome two thirdsfelt that issues of risk in relation to volunteering had become more of a problem in recent years.
	One result is the difficulty in recruiting volunteers. One in five organisations reported to Volunteering England that volunteers had stopped volunteering for them because of risk and liability fears.
	The good news is that many organisations are coming to terms with this change in culture and want to fight back and put in place preventive strategies that allow them to continue to operate, despite the sense of risk. Politicians of all parties should work closely with them to do whatever we can to remove whatever fears are unreasonable. Risk management policies and strategies may seem tedious, but they can be reassuring and effective. Organisations share good practice among themselves, and Volunteering England's own risk project funded by the Home Office is looking to develop a set of tools to help volunteer-involving agencies to develop their risk management policies. We collectively need to ensure that no more than is reasonable is demanded of organisations in the voluntary sector.
	A less high profile issue but one that is just as real is the increased responsibility being attached to trustees and governors. Not too long ago, those were honorary positions often held by retired professionals who cast a benevolent eye over governance and financial mattersbut no longer. Being held liable for significant financial sums or being embroiled in quite serious employment difficulties has made those jobs much more difficult and, for some, not worth the candle. We must make it easier for people to volunteer for such positions. It might be right to ask whether it is truly necessary to demand exactly the same rigorous standards in every organisation as might be expected from a major plc or an Enron.
	Other problems that colleagues may wish to address when they get a chance to speak include the problem of recruiting people who are older, making sure there is no age discrimination, watching out for disability discrimination, and making sure that the pattern of funding is compatible with the work of voluntary organisations. All too many complain of the short-term funding problem. I was speaking to a charity for the homeless this morning and was told that it was involved in 47 local contracts with 16 different authorities, of which only one contract lasted for longer than a year. It is not possible to work that way. We are trying to work in a different way in the public sector, and I hope that that will extend more to voluntary bodies.
	We need to make sure that everyone from all sections of society can contribute. It is true that those from a higher social classa higher financial backgroundtend to be more involved in volunteering than others. Looking for ways to make sure that we break down the barriers and that people can afford to give time and effort to voluntary organisations is extremely important. We must continue to do that.
	Finally, looking ahead, on 29 March Baroness Julia Neuberger launched the Commission on the Future of Volunteering. Following on from the success of volunteers year last year and the Russell Commission, over the next 12 months the commission will examine a range of issues, some of which I have touched on, to try and ensure that volunteering has a secure base for the future.
	Baroness Neuberger recognises, as do many others, that volunteering has never seemed as important as it does today, and is keen that the heightened interest of political parties should not result in party or Government takeover of voluntary activity. I can assure her from the Conservative Benches that there is no intention or aim of that happening. We recognise, as I am sure does the Minister, that volunteers offer a valuable non-partisan service which he appreciates in government, and which we will equally appreciate when we sit on the Government Benches.
	One of the key areas that we will be looking at is how we encourage young people into more voluntary activity. There is already quite a high level of participation, but as the Eden project shows, we want to encourage more. Growing people into voluntary organisations in their own areas is very valuable. I pay particular tribute to the Biggleswade sea cadets, of which I happen to be president. I have seen them being exceptionally active in the local community, and so many of those who have been in the sea cadets go on to give their time back to the local area and to the sea cadets and other voluntary organisations. The benefit to a small market town can only be imagined. When that is spread across the whole country, one sees how valuable the work can be.
	We all have our stories about the value of carers and volunteers. We have seen them in every circumstance. We have seen them working abroad to teach, relieve pain and suffering or protect the environment. We have seen them at home, from joyful participation in local events in their communities to sitting down with hurt and miserable children with the direst of backgrounds, but who suddenly have hope and aspiration as a result of a kind word and skilled advice. From all of us in this place, to all of them, wherever they are, you have our hearty thanks.

Edward Miliband: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). He spoke as someone who cares passionately about carers and volunteering, and he will no doubt make an important contribution to the Neuberger commission, the results of which we look forward to.
	I have been in my job as Minister with responsibility for the third sector in the Cabinet Office for a month or so, and I am delighted to have this opportunity to set out the Government's approach and future plans. We have good reason to be optimistic about the ethic of volunteering in this country. Next year, the new Office of the Third Sector will be investing 65 million a year directly in the infrastructure of volunteering programmes. Millennium Volunteers saw a transformation of youth volunteering in this country, engaging almost a quarter of a million young people. Today 20.4 million men and women in our country volunteer regularly, up from 18.4 million in 2001, a rise in both formal and informal volunteering.
	We need to go further. We have just launched V, the independent body that will build on the work of the Millennium Volunteers and is tasked with recruiting a million more youth volunteers. For carers too, there is more to do. There are more resources and better legislation, and the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, South (Mr. Lewis), who has responsibility for social care, will have more to say about that when he replies to the debate.
	For my part, I want to focus on the Government's approach to volunteering, which is based on three principles. The first is that volunteering, including mentoring, is the bedrock of our society. The second is that the Government have an enabling role to play, investing in organisations with the expertise to make the best use of resources and breaking down barriers to volunteering, and I will deal with some of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised on that. The thirdthis is importantis that volunteering should be seen as complementary to state action, not a substitute for it.
	I will deal first with the role that volunteering and mentoring play in our society. Almost 50 years ago, William Beveridge published a reportnot his most famousentitled Voluntary Action on the role of the voluntary sector in society. One phrase in it seems particularly apt as we meet in this House today. Voluntary action, he wrote, expressed
	the driving power of social conscience.
	I spent the first day of volunteers week last Thursday visiting and volunteering at different organisations, and for me they showed that driving power in action. They included the Whitechapel mission, serving breakfast to the homeless; Live magazine in Brixton, which is produced for and by some of the most disadvantaged young people in south London; the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, with its 140,000 volunteers across the UK, which is improving public spaces all round Britain; and Sixty Plus, in Kensington and Chelsea, which brings together young people and older citizens.
	The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. McFadden), volunteered for the excellent senior citizens' link line project in Bilston in his constituency, to which I pay tribute today, and the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Durham (Hilary Armstrong), visited a women's aid project and volunteered there this morning.
	What united the volunteers in those diverse organisations was both the individual fulfilment that people got out of their volunteering and the difference that they were making to their communities, as those to whom I spoke confirmed. As the hon. Gentleman and others have said, we see that all around the country, from the millions of volunteer sports coaches, to the hundreds of thousands of school governors, to the many thousands of volunteers who campaign for the causes in which they believe.
	The Government, of course, do not create volunteers, and it is important to remember that, but they do have an enabling role, which takes me to the second principle of our approach. That is partly seen in the enabling role of the Government investing in our volunteering infrastructure, and I want to talk about our future plans in that regard.
	Today, 47 per cent. of young people volunteer at least once a year. In the ways that they contributemy hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Patrick Hall) made this pointthey are a living contradiction to the stereotype of yobbishness with which too many young people are branded today. It is the responsibility of the mediawhich we often like to criticisebut also of politicians, to represent a balanced picture of young people. We want many more young people to have the chance to volunteer1 million more young people over five years. We know that volunteering enables young people to develop new skills outside school and broaden their horizons. By working with the third sector, public services and the private sector, our aim is to transform the number of young people who get involved in volunteering in their communities.

David Burrowes: Will the Minister visit Enfield, where there is a shining example of young people engaging in volunteering? Ofsted has lauded youth action volunteering in Enfield as a unique and valuable scheme, which sends 600 people to 230 placements each year. Those people all do 15 hours a week working in a variety of areas, not least the Leonard Cheshire home, which I visited this morning.

Edward Miliband: I am in the early phase of being a Minister, which means that I accept all invitations. I am therefore delighted to accept the hon. Gentleman's invitation and look forward to visiting Enfield. That said, I fear that another invitation is approaching.

Charles Walker: I have a two-for-one offer for the Minister, because my seat is next to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Burrowes). Will the Minister join me in recognising that every pound given to voluntary and charitable organisations generates huge valuesometimes 10 or 20 times the value of the donation?

Edward Miliband: I agree with the hon. Gentleman and will look kindly on his invitation. Gift aid has improved the situation on tax relief, and the sum provided by the taxpayer has increased from 200 million to 600 million. We all know about the huge impact of volunteering, and I shall discuss that matter later.
	V is a new, independent organisation, and it embodies the Government's enabling role. It will be led by young people through the youth advisory board, V20; it will be shaped by the needs of young people; and it will fund thousands of full-time youth volunteering opportunities, as well as many thousands more part-time opportunities. The Government have committed up to 100 million over three years to fund increases in youth volunteering through V, and I am pleased to say that 26 companies have already pledged their commitment to the project, contributing a total of more than 10 million.
	We want more young people to have the chance to volunteer.

David Lepper: Before the Minister leaves the question of young people and volunteering, does he agree that it is important to consider those young people who have caring responsibilities thrust upon them, such as caring for ailing parents or for younger brothers and sisters? Will he pay tribute to the work of Brighton and Hove carers centre in supporting the needs of young carers in the Brighton and Hove area? Will he join me in hoping that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will discuss the needs of young carers in his response to the debate?

Edward Miliband: I am happy to pay tribute to the organisation in my hon. Friend's constituency. Young carers are very important and the issue is particularly challenging. I know that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will want to discuss that issue at the conclusion of the debate.

Dari Taylor: Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that the matter involves more than young people? In my constituency, there are special constables who are 40-plus. There are also people, some of whom are 50-plus or 60-plus, who work in a voluntary capacity on cardiac risk for the young and who provide enormous quantities of money and equipment for hospitals. We are discussing young people, but many ancients work very hard in the voluntary sector.

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend has anticipated my remarks, because I was about to discuss older volunteers. Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to attend the Help the Aged and the Volunteering Initiative in the Third Age conference, where two older volunteers talked about their amazing work. We look forward to the VITA report in the autumn, which will address what more we can do to promote the role of older volunteers. I agree with my hon. Friend that older volunteers play an important role.

Jeremy Hunt: Before the Minister moves on to talk about older people's volunteering, may I invite him to my constituency to visit the Bourne children and youth initiative and the Farnham youth project? I assure him of a very warm welcome should he find the time to visit those very worthwhile projects in an area of the country that has not traditionally been a stronghold for his party.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the Minister responds, may I say to the House that interventions are becoming invitations and, to some extent, mini-speeches? I understand that all hon. Members want to contribute to the debate, but others are waiting to make speeches later and the clock is ticking. I know that the Minister has to make a full response, but if everybody else could make their speeches a little shorter than they had planned, more Members could speak.

Edward Miliband: Perhaps I should take further invitations in writing rather than in person during the debate.

Bob Spink: rose

Edward Miliband: Of course I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is much concerned with the charity sector.

Bob Spink: The Minister will be aware that voluntary organisations often hold fundraising events such as garden parties. Will he clarify whether those are exempt from the provisions of the Licensing Act 2005, provided that alcohol is not sold and the money raised is for the good cause, not for profit? Is he aware that some local council licensing departments are making a perverse interpretation of this law, and will he encourage local councils to adopt a helpful attitude instead of discouraging such events?

Edward Miliband: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who gives me the chance to say that a committee under Sir Les Elton is considering the whole issue of the implementation of the Licensing Act, particularly as it affects village halls and other venues.
	There are different rules and procedures for those that serve alcohol as against those that do not, and it is very important that they are implemented properly. I take the hon. Gentleman's point and would be happy to talk further with him.
	As I said, we are working with VITA, but it is also important to give volunteering opportunities to those who are excluded and under-represented in terms of those opportunities, including disabled people, black and ethnic minorities and other socially excluded groups. I can announce today that we are allocating 3 million for a new partnership between the Media Trust and organisations representing disabled, black and ethnic minority and socially excluded groups to try to open up volunteering opportunities for them.
	The Government's role is not only about improving the volunteering infrastructure, but about removing barriers to volunteering. The new Office of the Third Sector, based in the Cabinet Office, offers an opportunity for greater co-ordination within Government of the effort to break down those barriers, three of which have been cited in particular as preventing volunteering. First, there is the deterrent effect of potential legal action for incidents involving volunteers. Several hon. Members raised that issue. Tomorrow, the Compensation Bill receives its Second Reading in the House. It represents an important response to concerns that have been raised, including in the private Member's Bill introduced in 2004 by the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). Part 1 of the Compensation Bill makes it clear that when considering a claim of negligence, courts will be able to consider the wider social value of the activity. That will help to ensure that voluntary organisations are not discouraged from taking on volunteers by the threat of legal action. It has been widely welcomed by many organisations that use volunteers. For example, the Scout Association has said that it welcomes the proposals.
	Secondly, there is the operation of the Criminal Records Bureau, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire and by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart), who is no longer in his place. Every year, about 500,000 checks on volunteers are processed by the CRB free of charge as a result of a decision made by this Government. That is a considerably higher number of applications than was expected. There have been concerns about delays in processing, but I am pleased to say that the situation has improved, with 93 per cent. of standard checks completed within two weeks and 88 per cent. of enhanced checks completed within four weeks. Of course, we recognise that there is scope for further improvement in this area, and we will continue to consult the sector and work with the CRB to bring about improvements. We are working on several matters, but I believe that the situation has improved.
	Thirdly, concerns have been raised, including in the Russell report, about the benefit rules being a possible deterrent to volunteering. On examination, it turned out that many of those anxieties related to the implementation of the rules rather than the rules themselves. For example, those on jobseeker's allowance can volunteer provided that they continue to look for work and can start a job within a week. That is why the Government have launched an updated guide to volunteering while on benefits. The task is now to ensure that it is implemented locally in jobcentres.
	A final part of the enabling role of Government is to build an ethos of volunteeringthe sense that we all have a responsibility to put something back into our society. That must start in schools, and that is why the Government have already piloted the active citizens in schools programme and are determined to do more to embed volunteering in the citizenship curriculum. We are also working with the private sector, through Business in the Community, and with the public sector to open up more volunteering opportunities and persuade more people to volunteer.
	The third principle of the Government's approach is that the role of the third sector in general, and volunteers in particular, must be seen as a supplement to and not a substitute for Government funding of public services. The relationship of state and the third sector has always been difficult for our societywe should be honest about thatand, indeed, for any major advanced industrial society that has a welfare state. The third sector can reach out to the disadvantaged, it is close to the communities that it serves and it has a deserved reputation for innovation. As we have already heard in the debate, the role of volunteers reflects the reality that there will always be ways in which Government provision and services can be supplemented by the engagement of volunteers. However, volunteering must not be seen as, and cannot be a cut-price alternative to Government. That is true of the third sector generally.
	Before the second world war, the patchwork nature of the welfare state may have encouraged a spirit of charity and voluntary action, but Labour Members do not romanticise that era, for it was a time when services were frail and failed many people. For Labour Members, the significant increases in expenditure on public servicesand the resultant improvementsare consistent with the increase in volunteering. Both contribute to a more just society.
	Today's debate is important because I hope that it might enable us to declare a happy consensus on the need for partnership between the state and the voluntary sector. That would be welcome. It would mark a major change from the position of the Conservative party in the 1980s, when the choice between state and volunteer was perceived as a zero sum gamemore state provision meant crowding out the volunteer; less state provision was desirable because it would increase voluntary action.

Adam Afriyie: Does the Parliamentary Secretary share my concern that today, many volunteers give much of their time to hospitals throughout the country serving tea, providing artwork and performing many other noble tasks? I was stunned by his party political point because my example shows the substitution of public expenditure for volunteer labour. Will he do something about that?

Edward Miliband: There has always been a tradition in our public services of people giving their time voluntarily. However, voluntary activity cannot be a substitute for the core part of the work that public services do.
	I welcome the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) to the debate. He has taken a great interest in the voluntary sector and social justice. I feel some anxiety when reading some of the speeches that he has given on the issue and I hope that he will have the chance to speak in the debate. Last November, around the time when he was appointed to his new role, he made a speech in which he said:
	As big charity gets ever closer to big government, it increasingly mirrors its thinking and behaviour.
	I am worried and I believe that there is concern in the voluntary sector that that represents a 1980s view of faith in smaller government and belief that voluntary action should fill the gap.

Iain Duncan Smith: The speech to which the Parliamentary Secretary refers dealt with the relationship between larger charities and the smaller voluntary groups. He should go back to his office and examine carefully what happens with some of the bigger charities. Approximately 5 per cent. dominate charitable giving to such an extent that many smaller groups cannot get money. At the same time, they dominate the relationship with big government, often dictating the pressure on it. Genuine voluntary effort in the community groups often gets crowded out by that combination of big government and big charity.

Edward Miliband: I have the utmost respect for the right hon. Gentleman, who is a much more senior Member of the House than I am. However, in the last part of his intervention, he again referred to crowding out by big government. He and I have a very honest disagreementnot about ends, because I completely respect the ends towards which he is working, but about means. I do not think that the role of the Government necessarily crowds out the work of voluntary sector groups. However, when we are considering ways in which the voluntary sector can carry out more public service delivery, big charities will inevitably be involved.

Iain Duncan Smith: I really must take up this issue with the hon. Gentleman. I visit a lot of small community groups around the country, pretty much throughout the year now, as part of my work with the Centre for Social Justice. One of the abiding features of what the people working in those groups tell me time and again is that they do not want to access local or national Government money because when they do, they feel that their activities get taken over by the Government and they fall into the pattern of being check-listed by civil servants. They absolutely fear the hand of the Government. I did not make that up. The hon. Gentleman should come with me on some of those visits, and I will show him people in Glasgow, Manchester and Sheffield who all work hard and all say the same thing: that they fear big government because it tends to take them over. Those are not my words, but theirs.

Edward Miliband: Of course, the right hon. Gentleman is right. In a way, that is what I was talking about when I referred to barriers. The Government's relationship with the voluntary sector needs to be conducted with a light touch, and we need to strike the proper balance between accountability and the flexibility to spend resources. I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman and I simply have a philosophical disagreement on this issue.
	In the months and years ahead we will scrutinise the Conservatives' proposals and intentions, and I hope that there can be consensus on this question. The relationship between state and voluntary activity is an important issue for our country, but it is not an easy one. There might be disagreements, but I hope that we can reach consensus.
	I believe that it is right to celebrate the work of volunteers. In small ways and large, they are making a huge difference to our country. Forty years ago this month, the American politician Robert Kennedy said in a speech to young people in South Africa that the biggest danger facing our society was the sense of futility, and the belief that
	there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills.
	Every year, millions of British volunteers are the living answer to the danger of futility. They are active citizens changing our country for the better. They have a Government on their side, and I salute their work today.

David Heath: I very much welcome the debate and the tone in which the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) opened it. I suspected from the start that this would be one of the most consensual debates of the year, and, so far, that has been borne out by the words of the hon. Gentleman and of the Minister. I think that this is the first time that I have had the opportunity to welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband) to his new responsibilities, after he was so cruelly robbed of that opportunity during the course of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. I congratulate him, and warmly welcome him. I also thank him for what he has said today. If he makes a habit of quoting that great Liberal, William Beveridge, in his speeches, he will maintain a welcome from these Benches.
	Although the contributions to the debate will probably follow more or less the same linesalbeit with some areas of tension, such as the one that was explored in the latter stages of the Minister's speech we need to recognise that the warm feeling that comes from congratulating the voluntary sector from the Chamber is insufficient to its needs. To use the time-honoured phrase, fine words butter no parsnips. The requirement is not only to feel well disposed towards the voluntary sector, but to help it to do its essential job and to recognise some of the barriers that stand in its way.
	We have already heard about the huge range of activities across the country that are covered by the voluntary sector. Those activities are all done for the greater public good. The citizens advice bureaux, for instance, do a marvellous job in many of our communities. Those who work with elderly people are doing work that would otherwise not be done, because it would not be done by the statutory sector. There are also the special constables, who were mentioned by the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor).
	Those who work in the artistic and cultural heritage sectors are important to the life of our communities, not only adding to but maintaining that which we have. The industrial heritage sector in particular is often unsung. In that sector, people devote their lives to maintaining things that give instruction and pleasure to people in our local communities.
	We should not forget those in local government, who are often forgotten in their role as volunteers. In fact, local government is made up of volunteers, particularly at parish council level. Many parish councillors take on considerable responsibilities in return for few thanks and little reward, and I am grateful for the work that they do. Those who volunteer to work for political parties certainly do not often receive thanks publicly, but they are volunteers none the less. Many of them give their time because of their commitment to a principle. They are prepared to do that day after day, week after week and year after year, and we should say thank you to them. We may feel that a number of them are mistaken in their political beliefs, but they are all doing what they do because they believe it to be for the common good.
	School governors, who have been mentioned today, take on an extraordinarily responsible task nowadays, which is probably far beyond what they thought they were taking on in the first instance. I am worried by some of the responsibilities that now fall on their shoulders.
	We should also take account of youth work, in its widest context. I am glad that the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire mentioned his sea cadets, because I think we should pay special regard to the inestimable value of the work of the cadet force with young people. It does not merely provide them with the experiences that it is traditionally so good at providing. Earlier today, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander) told me that at the weekend he had presented awards for community service to a number of cadets who had been not climbing mountains, sailing ships or flying planes, but helping the elderly as part of their training. That strikes me as an extremely valuable contribution.
	There are those who raise funds for all sorts of purposes: organisations such as rotary clubs and, in my part of the world, carnival associations. Carnivals are not, in fact, a Notting Hill phenomenon; they are a Somerset phenomenon. We have the largest and best carnivals in the country, although they are not known to a great many people. The work of carnival associations continues throughout the year. They produce the floats for carnivals such as the Bridgwater carnival, which is attended by a quarter of a million people. Such carnivals raise a phenomenal amount of money for good causes.
	We would not have a sports structure without the voluntary sectorwithout the coaches, the groundsmen and the honorary secretaries, treasurers, presidents and chairmen of the sports clubs in our constituencies. Those who work for the environment and conservation give up their time to make their communities that little bit better. But it is pointless to highlight particular organisations or individuals, because the list is endless.
	The Minister may be relieved to hear that I am not going to invite him to my constituencynot because I would not be delighted to see him there, and not because I do not have a huge array of local organisations that I think would be worthy of his attention, but simply because I recognise that he has new responsibilities in his Department. Let me say how glad I am that responsibility for voluntary work has been removed from the maw of the Home Office and its tottering empire and given to the Cabinet Office, where I hope more attention will be paid to it.
	Last, but certainly not least, are carers. No doubt attention will be paid to them later. They are, by definition, volunteers. They probably do not think of themselves as such but rather as people who provide care either because of an obligation or out of love for the individual on whom they are bestowing that care. However, they are part of the voluntary sector. What does the sector provide? It adds value to statutory activities and fills the gaps that the statutory providers will never fill. It also strengthens communities, supports families and reduces crime.
	I want to highlight the effect of the sector on rural areas. We often think of urban volunteers as providing services, but that activity is often even more important in rural areas because of the lack of statutory provision. If the statutory bodies and local authorities do not provide various functions, it is left to the volunteers to fill those gaps. I applaud the point made about the Licensing Act 2005 and its effect on village hall committees. Village halls are often key components of voluntary activity in local areas.
	Volunteering is done for a mixture of motives. Altruism is one. Care and love for individuals is another. The feeling that one has skills that are unused and can be put to better use for the community is a third. The fourth, and not to be forgotten, motive is fun. It is fun to do a lot of the activities, and people engage in voluntary activities for that purpose.

Dari Taylor: Will the hon. Gentleman make it clear, or join me in saying, that volunteers do many things that the state in no way, shape of form gets involved in? Alan Wade, a farmer in my constituency, is putting together eight very large lorry loads of clothes and medical equipment to go to Chernobyl. No one else is going to do that. He is valianta superb man. There are many Alan Wades in Great Britain, and we should celebrate them again and again.

David Heath: I share the hon. Lady's sentiments. The voluntary sector provides things that the state cannot. The key point, which was made by the Minister, is the need for complementarityone adds to the other, not replaces the other. However, I say in parenthesis that I share some of the concerns expressed by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) about the Government taking what is effectively an agency approach to the voluntary sector, which changes the relationship between the voluntary sector and the community it serves. Sometimes that relationship is disturbed. We need to act with extreme care.

Alistair Burt: rose

David Heath: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman but I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak so I will not take any more interventions.

Alistair Burt: The Minister referred to the Conservatives being stuck in a particular pattern of thinking. As I listened to him, I was worried that he had a particular pattern of thought as well, which is about the superiority of public service delivery. If he retains that view and does not see that there are flaws in public service delivery that voluntary agencies sometimes highlight, he is missing something, which betrays a pattern of thought that he needs to change.

David Heath: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was suggesting that I held that view. I emphatically do not. However, I now understand that he was referring to the Minister. That debate can be resolved during the course of the evening.
	The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire is equally right to point out the barriers. We should be concentrating on those. It is not enough simply to applaud what is done, but to say how we can enable that to happen in a better and more effective way. There are some aspects of voluntary work in which people are prevented from doing their best, sometimes by a lack of facilities, such as sports fields, and the lack of investment in local communities that provides the wherewithal for people to offer their services effectively. Sometimes it happens because of bureaucracy. The Criminal Records Bureau is still a live issue for many people. I welcome what the Minister said about improvement, but I recognise, because I have come across it in my constituencyall hon. Members must find the same thingthat the inevitable checks have a depressing effect on the preparedness of people to volunteer.
	The checks and balances that we put in place must be proportionate. Of course we must protect the young and the vulnerable, but we need to do so in a way that is consonant with people still providing the levels of support that they themselves can offer. That also applies to the area of risk aversion, which has been mentioned. The Compensation Bill goes some way toward dealing with that.
	However, the problem is often not the so-called compensation cultureI have never been convinced that such a culture existsor litigation being carried through into court; rather, it is the interpretation by organisations of their liability through litigation that prevents them from doing things that they would otherwise do. A huge educative process is needed in order to tell organisations, Yes, you can expose people to appropriate risk in carrying out outdoor activities in particular. That is not a wrong thing to doit strengthens people and their prospects for the future provided that you take reasonable precautions and measures to ensure that they do not come to harm.
	It worries me that support for the voluntary sector, particularly from local government, is always vulnerable. By definition, it occurs in marginal areas of statutory duties, which means that when times are hard in local government, such support is cut. That principle even extends to social services and support for carers in many parts of the country, which is in any case a patchwork of provision and is now under real threat.
	The key issue, however, is the financial consequences, and here I shall concentrate on carers. For many, the restrictions on the carer's allowance are a real difficulty. An example is the 35-hour restriction, which rules out many people. Moreover, when people become statutory pensioners, they lose the carer's allowance. I understand the financial consequences of taking a different view on this issue; nevertheless, that restriction represents a horror story for many elderly carers, particularly those who are caring for their even more elderly parents. People can earn up to a limit of 84 a week, which is not very much, before they start to lose their carer's allowance. Those who are at school, university or college for more than 21 hours a week do not qualify for carer's allowance. These are all restrictions on people who are desperate to support their loved ones in their homes, and who, in doing so, are saving the state vast sums of money. In addition, such caring is to the advantage of the individual being cared for.
	The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (David Lepper) was right to draw attention to child carers, who are the forgotten carers. I hope that schools and colleges become much more aware of this issue, spot the stress experienced by young people who are caring for a parent or an older sibling in the home, and make arrangements to support them through their schooling, so that their education does not suffer, and to support them socially by acting as mentors and helping them deal with the problems that inevitably lie in their way.
	We have a pension reform programme, which recognises the difficulties faced by carers, but does not propose to do anything about them during the lifetime of those who are currently carers. That is an issue of huge concern.

Si�n James: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

David Heath: We have very limited time and other Members will not get a chance to speak if I give way.
	Finally, it should be made easier for businesses to release people to allow them to take part in voluntary activity, and it should be in their interests to do so. That brings me to a specific question that I would like the Minister to respond to, if he can. There is a concern about the definition of carers in clause 12 of the Work and Families Bill. The Minister will be aware that although this is to be settled by secondary legislation, the intimation is that the definition of carers will be restricted to those with a familial connection with the person being cared for. That is alarming many people in the sector, who realise that carers can comprise a much larger group. This definition is too narrow and restrictive, and even if it is appropriate in the context of the Bill, its use outside that context and in other aspects of the Government's programme would be counter-productive.
	Because of the lack of time, I feel that I should shorten my remarks at this point. To some extent, it is a platitude to express a debt of gratitude to carers and volunteers in this country, but it is necessary to do so. We owe them an enormous amount. In cash terms, too, the state owes them an enormous amount for their work. That makes it all the more necessary to reduce the barriers in their way and to promote and encourage their work, which has not always been the case. I am encouraged by the Minister's views, but I now want action taken to reduce the barriers and really encourage those people.

Hywel Francis: I wish to declare a number of relevant interests, as a former carer, as vice-president of Carers UK, as chair of the all-party carers group and as the sponsor of the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004. I begin by congratulating the official Opposition on proposing the debate. I particularly welcome the positive comments made by all three speakers so far. This debate is a measure of the progress made in the country and across the House in advancing the cause of carers and volunteers. It is commendable that those issues have moved much higher up on all our political agendas.
	The official Opposition threw down an intriguing gauntlet by linking volunteering with caring. I am sure that no one would suggest that carers carry out their work as volunteers, as I believe that they undertake their responsibilities out of love for family members. However, many carers are volunteers above the call of duty when they work in carers' organisations. We have already heard about many such excellent organisations and the carers who work in them.
	In my own county borough of Neath Port Talbot, there are more than 20,000 carersthe highest proportion in any county borough in the UK. Serving those areas are some admirable carers' organisations, too numerous to mention, but I will refer to as many as I can in the limited time availablethe epilepsy support group, Cancer Challenge, the Special Needs Activity Club, Age Concern and, perhaps most intriguingly of all, a new carers action movement, chaired by my friend, Mr. Ray Thomas, who with his wife Margaret has been a carer for 40 years. Alongside that, he has now formed his own carers action movement. Another interesting initiative involves former carers coming together to support new carers in the upper Afan valley.
	The Governmentmy Governmenthave done a great deal to enhance the lives of carers from the launch of the national carers strategy in 1999 and the introduction of the carers special grant to more recent recognition of the right of carers to request flexible working in the Work and Families Bill and, even more recently, in respect of the right to decent pensions for carers, particularly women, in the new White Paper on pensions.
	This debate affords Members the opportunity to raise some important policy issues relating to the link between caring and volunteering. Young carers provide one example. In my county borough, there are 600 such carers under the age of 16. How can both the Welsh Assembly Government and the Government in Westminster help those young carers to become volunteers, beyond their own caring responsibilities and their school work? I hope that Education Ministers will deal with that when the Education and Inspections Bill returns to the House.
	Beyond the Bill, I believe that young carers could benefit more if family support were provided by the expansion of such remarkable schemes as the Winged Fellowship Trust and the Shared Care Network. More respite care of that kind is essential for all carers, but particularly for young carers. Additional funds and awards to such admirable bodies as Crossroads and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers and local authorities would greatly assist young and older carers. All that could be part of the implementation of the Russell Commission recommendations on volunteering.
	As carers' rights become more central to public policy in all Departments, would it not be appropriate to appoint a carers' championa specific Minister, with cross-cutting departmental responsibilities to enhance and advance the rights of all carers? It would be admirable, in advance of next week's carers week, if we were to hear today some kind of commitment from the Government to create such a position.
	In conclusion, I warmly welcome the comment made by my hon. Friend the Minister when he said that there is much more to be done for carers. The debate is worth while in recognising and valuing the indispensable role of carers and volunteers and the collective commitment of hon. Members on both sides of the House to achieve more respect, more recompense and more respite care for carers. I congratulate the official Opposition on their initiative, and I urge the Government to endorse the spirit behind it.

Iain Duncan Smith: I did not intend to speak and I hope that I can keep my words fairly limited. I congratulate my hon. and good Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on securing the debate and on his opening remarks, and I want to try to keep mine in the spirit of non-partisan-style politics. Although I will not quite follow the Minister down that road, I want to make a couple of points. Ever the politician, I do not want to miss the opportunity to respond to a couple of quick points that he made.
	One of the biggest problems that I see from the work that I do with the Centre for Social Justice relates to the big difference between the concept of charity and that of volunteering. The reality for many people who volunteer to do important work in the community, such as getting kids off drugs, helping pensioners who have difficulty getting out or sorting out problems in the aftermath of family breakdownI am sure that all hon. Members will have seen such things every day in their workis that they find that there is a growing divide between their activities and those of the bigger charities, most of whose work is done by paid people, who earn a salary and come to work much as many other people do. Worthy as that may be, there is a big disparity in their access to money and that of many small community groups.
	Some national charities sit on very large reserves of money, while still collecting donations. In some cases, as much as half their national requirements are held in reserves worth millions of pounds. Many of the groups that I talk to live from hand to mouth. They struggle every day; they literally go out with the begging bowl. Sometimes, visiting them as a politician is one of the ways of getting them publicity, so that people donate some money to them. Let us never underestimate the worth of that publicity to those groups.
	In a sense, there is in part a divided world. Small groups doing all the work find it more difficult to provide real access to the welfare society. They often find themselves crowded out by the activities of the national charities, whose dominance in fundraising squeezes out other charities. People who have already committed money to the bigger charities find it difficult to give money to the small community groups. Some of those things need to be thought through. The national charities need to rethink their relationship on giving with the smaller communities groups, and the Government need to do so, too.
	I want to speak about a couple of problems, the first of which is the relationship with the Government. A number of issues have been raised and the Minister has made some observationsI congratulate him on trying to deal with some of these thingsbut many Government agencies find it very difficult to deal with small community groups and charities. He is right: he and the agencies like working with the bigger charities. It is always easier to work with big organisations that are well-organised and have marketing directors, chiefs of staff and all those other things. They can talk almost on even terms. Small community groupsI call them the awkward squadoften involve people who are challenging opinions and attitudes, sometimes doing things that others are not sure are right, and they can be more difficult to deal with.
	I remember visiting Connexions in my area and asking what it was doing as part of its brief to support some of the smaller community groups and charities. Most of its work seemed to be supporting the local government work in the area, because that was so much easier. The staff were scared stiff of committing to small community groups because they were worried about what might happen if they failed or went wrong, or problems occurred. Therefore, the lion's share of the money that the Government had intended to go to some of the small community groups ended up going to projects set up by the local council. I asked the staff about one specific project and they said that they had had no take-up from local sports groups, but they could not understand why. I asked what requirements they laid on such groups, and it turned out that they had to have a full personnel check and full liability insurance before their bids could be assessed. I threw up my hands and asked how many of those one man and a dog operations that ran two football teams on a Sunday could afford liability insurance before they could make a bid for funds.
	I am not blaming the staff, because they were good people trying hard to find a solution, but it had not occurred to them that people were working hand to mouth and struggling to run football teams through pure voluntary work. Everybody involved was giving up time and often money.
	The attitude of the Government and civil servants to such issues is ingrained. They like dealing with organisations that are sizeable, orderly, working well and structured. They find it really difficult to work with small groups. I urge the Minister to think outside the box and find ways to deal with those groups, which are doing wonderful work in our community and include some of the most inspirational people I have ever met. Such organisations are more like small businesses, with all the same awkwardness and peculiarities, and they fail at the same ratebut they can also inspire and grow at the same rate. Unless we get our thinking around the fact that those social entrepreneurs are every bit as important to us as economic entrepreneurs, we will not begin to realise why so much in our society is challenging and broken down.
	I do not wish to labour the point about big charities, but we need to rethink the situation when so many big charities collect vast amounts of moneyand many do very good work with itand sit on vast reserves. I visited a charity which received some publicity as a result. Someone who had grown up in Gallowgate and gone on to great things in London read about the charityit is run by Jim Doherty and is a local community charity that helps people get off drugsand offered it 10,000 a year. That is a lot of money for such a group, but larger charities can have 50 million or more in reserve. Just a tiny proportion of that would go so far towards helping others out. The same goes for the Government, because small amounts of money can make a massive difference.
	We have talked a lot about how much volunteering saves the nation and delivers services. What we have not mentioned is that volunteering benefits the individuals who do it. It makes them better people, and that improves our society. It is an immeasurable element, but the less volunteers work in our society, the less we are as a nation. Therefore, encouraging people to volunteer is arguably every bit as important as the most encouraging work we do in economics.

Lynda Waltho: I support the main thrust of the motion, especially where it talks of the care and dedication of carers, but we need to be clear about the definition of carers. They can be relatives, friends or neighbours who look after someone who cannot manage without help because of sickness, age or disability. Carers look after people of all ages and can be of all ages themselves. They can be male or female, although they are more often women. Parents who care for a child with a long-term illness or disability are also carers. Some carers look after someone for a few hours a week; others do so for 24 hours a day, every day. Many carers care in their own homes, while others support friends living nearby or miles away.
	My constituency is located in the Dudley area, where there are 35,000 carers, of whom 7,500 provide more than 50 hours a week. In addition, there are 900 young carers between the ages of five and 17. That caring support is given willingly, but it must never be taken for granted.
	It has been said that carers need society's support as well as its thanks, and that support has led to a great deal being achieved by the combined efforts of organisations campaigning on carers' behalf. Those achievements should also be considered alongside the raft of progressive policy initiatives introduced by this Labour Government.
	This Government are the first to recognise the needs of carers as well as the needs of those who are cared for, and I have seen the effects of their progressive policies on the lives of carers in Dudley. Those carers are also assisted by a dedicated and well organised network that is most ably co-ordinated by a great lady named Christine Rowley.
	In addition, we in Dudley are fortunate to have a dedicated helpline that gives carers the opportunity to talk to other carers. That excellent service is staffed by volunteer carers, whose experience ensures that they understand what callers are going through. The aim is to provide a listening ear, carer to carer, and the service is invaluable to many people in my constituency.
	As well as the advice line, carers have access to a vast amount of information on financial matters, health, respite care and employment issues. That access to information is vital, and it is a matter that comes up again and again when I talk to carers in my constituency. They want to be recognised for the care that they provide: they make a strong plea that they should not be called informal carers but that they should be considered to be the real professionals.
	I want to highlight the vital area of training opportunities for carers. In Dudley, we have established the care link scheme, which is aimed at people who want to find work in health and social care. Its dedicated team gives full support to job seekers, providing them with the skills needed for a satisfying role in the care industry. The scheme is also open to anyone between the ages of 24 and 59, and full support is given throughout.
	Carers can also work for the City and Guilds learning for living certificate, a personal development and learning qualification for unpaid carers. The expert patients programme helping people with long-term illnesses has been welcomed by local carers, and a new programme, looking after me, has been developed specifically for carers who themselves have long-term illnesses. Tutors are just finishing their training, and the first course will be offered shortly.
	Dudley is well served by a service called Crossroadsnamed after the much loved soap opera based in a midlands motelthat provides caring for carers. The service was praised in 2005 by the Commission for Social Care Inspection for the work that it does in providing sitting services to help carers take a break. It is fully funded from Dudley council's carer's grant, and is backed by the Big Lottery Fund.
	All of the carers grant is still allocated to carers in Dudley. The money is directed specifically at carers who want to use it to enable them take a break. Flexibility is the key, and some 200 carers will benefit from the funding next year.
	I also want, however, to draw attention to the needs of parents of children with disabilities. Those of us who are parents of able-bodied children generally expect our responsibilities to decrease over time, but that is not so for the parents of children with disabilities. Their caring responsibilities generally increase as their children get older and less help is provided by the support services.
	In that connection, I want to pay particular tribute to the Orchard partnership, based in Stourbridge. That unique and vital service for vulnerable children with disabilities and their families was set up by a group of parents co-ordinatedand, as is often of the case, chivvied and coercedby one parent in particular. That parent is Madeleine Cowley, who is now the chairman of the organisationa volunteer, of course.
	Many children now survive illnesses that they would not have survived even 10 years ago, and the Orchard partnership was set up to address their needs and those of their carers. It helps them to have the same quality of life that other children enjoy. I have paid several visits to the Orchard: I have watched its Saturday club run drama workshops, met parent and carer support groups and seen children and carers benefit from short breaks. There is also a special youth forum that is focused on raising the profile of the issues facing young disabled people and their families during the vital period of transition to adult life. The parent-led committee continues to support the services offered by the Orchard partnership and all the services benefit from the contribution of volunteer support workers. All the volunteers are a valuable asset and really enhance the services provided to the children and their families. The Orchard provides a toy library and I was proud to become patron of that last year, at the launch of the story sacks. That is a great initiative that allows parents to use puppets when they are telling stories to their children. I do not quite know who enjoyed that moreme or the childrenbut it is certainly a brilliant initiative.
	On a more serious note, I draw the Minister's attention to the problem that such services face when funding streams approach their end. Lengthy waits are often endured before hearing about confirmation of continued funding for future development. Perhaps he can offer some hope of stability or ring-fencing of funding for such projects in the future.
	To sum up my contribution to today's debate, I will paraphrase my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister: a lot done, a lot more to do. I am proud to have been part of a Government who recognise that caring can affect both the health and the financial status of carers and their families, that access to employment opportunities helps to maintain financial security and self-confidence, that training and education enables people to return to work when they want to or to work flexibly according to their needs, and that access to leisure services gives carers time to themselves to recharge their batteries. It is vital that that is where we target this support. Carers are entitled to the same benefits as anybody else. Put simply: they have earned them. Some ask, Can we afford to support carers? We should answer, Can we afford not to?

Richard Benyon: I have scythed through my speech and will get through it in seconds. I just want to touch on some of the points that have been raised and add a few of my own. In west Berkshire, I am lucky to have an excellent volunteer centre, which is run by its director, Garry Poulson. He and I talk regularly about what encourages people to volunteer and what makes the voluntary sector tick. He keeps interesting statistics showing who walks through his door and the different areas of volunteering that he guides them towards. It is fascinating to see the number of young people who are volunteering, the gender difference and the type of activities that people wish to go towards.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) touched on the important subject of what prevents people from volunteering. I will touch on that in the few minutes that I have left. As the vice-chairman of our local citizens advice bureau, I completely take the point made by the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). I have spent hours discussing governance issues such as the accounts, the reserves policy, and whether we should be incorporated. All those sort of things sap one's enthusiasm for volunteering. We are interested in what the organisation does and not necessarily how the mechanics of administrating it work. We have to look seriously at the pressure that we put on volunteers in terms of the administration of voluntary bodieswhether we are talking about the Criminal Records Bureau, the fear of litigation, the cost of insurance, compliance with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, or all the financial regulations that are involved.
	There is a wonderful book by Robert Putnam called Bowling Alone, which looks at the problems of American societymany of which are reflected in this country, as well. He identifies one of the key factorsit was touched on by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshirethat limits people's availability to volunteer: time. Professor Putnam has calculated that every 10 minutes of commuting cuts all forms of social engagement by 10 per cent. That is 10 per cent. fewer family suppers and 10 per cent. fewer local club meetings and other community activities. So, the knock-on effect of the successful battle that we fought in west Berkshire to protect our rail service was to increase to a small degree, or at least sustain, the amount of volunteering. Professor Putnam makes the poignant point that people who want to volunteer get home from work exhausted and it is easier to sit down and watch Friends than go out to find and interact with real ones.
	Can Government make more people volunteer? Of course, in a direct sense, the answer is almost universally no. However, they can incentivise and make it easier for people to volunteer. I want to point to one key example in my constituency: Vodafone. Vodafone has not had a very good press in recent days, but it continues to be a force for good in west Berkshire. There is scarcely a voluntary body that it does not help financially and, matching that, it encourages employees to participate in environmental working parties and community reading projects. It creates a virtuous circle of a diminution in sickness and increase in productivity. I thus urge the Government to examine the incentives that they can give to companies.
	In conclusion, I ask the Government to accept that it is crucial to understand the difference between the voluntary sector and the not-for-profit charitable sector. The latter is an arm's length deliverer of Government services, with a huge call on financial resources, while the other is a wonderfully anarchic network of social and emotional interaction. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) said, the voluntary sector should be allowed to exercise its willsometimes in the wrong direction, but always with enormous enthusiasm and in the direction of ultimate rightwithin the framework of the Government's plans for the sector.

Tim Loughton: We have had an excellent and brief debate, during which we have heard good and succinctin most cases, I am glad to saycontributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House. I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband), to his post. I welcomed many of the comments that he made in his maiden speech from the Dispatch Box, especially when he talked about the Government's enabling role and said that the work of volunteers should be complementary to state action, not a substitute for it. However, some of his other language betrayed the perception among many in this country that volunteers and carers are too often used as cheap labour, or that we have volunteering and caring on the cheap.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) rightly said, with his great expertise in the area through the Centre for Social Justice, too many volunteers are discouraged by the fear of the heavy hand of big government and the box ticking and regulation that goes with that. Additionally, too many small volunteer groups are crowded out by a higher tier of the bigger charities, which seem to be perhaps too close to the Government in many cases.
	There are also worries about the complementarity of funding. The national lottery has not been mentioned today, but there is a real feeling that many of the things that are funded by the various national lottery funds should be paid for with mainstream funding for the health service or education. This week, I was at the annual general meeting of the Friends of Worthing hospital, of which I am vice-president. Half the money that we raised in the past year was spent on equipping bathrooms in the local hospital. That is not complementary funding, but core funding, and there is thus a worry about the way in which volunteers' time and effort are used.
	We have had a good debate on a subject that is important to everyone inside and outside the House. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) should be rightly congratulated on moving the motion without a bead of sweat on his brow after completing the mile in six minutes 22 secondsI am afraid that he was way ahead of me.
	The timing of our debate on this worthy subject is good, given that we had volunteers week last week and it will be carers week next week. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will have been involved in all sorts of projects. I have been asked to point out that Conservative Welsh Assembly Members have recently visited hospices, the ChildLine operations in Wales, projects promoting Welsh produce and superb projects operating with some of the least privileged and most at-risk children in the United Kingdomthere is a plug for Wales.
	I declare an interest in that I have been a national trustee of Community Service Volunteers since 2001. The body has operated for more than 40 years as the largest volunteer organisation in the country and is under the excellent leadership of Dame Elisabeth Hoodless. The body is responsible for make a difference day, with which I am sure most people are familiar. I am sure that hon. Members have participated on the day by working in charity shops, on environmental projects and with social workers or NHS hospitals. This year, 100,000 volunteers contributed to make a difference day.
	For the past five years, as the shadow children's Minister, I have been to the young carers festival in Southampton. Some youngsters do the most remarkable jobs in enormously stressful situations. They need to be congratulated, but also helped. However, I shall concentrate on corporate volunteering, and on young carers in particular. I will not go into all the figures about the number of people who volunteer and why they are motivated. It should be noted that 45 per cent. of people who volunteer have a disability. Of people who volunteer, 44 per cent. are from the black and minority ethnic communities, while 38 per cent. of those who volunteer are without formal qualifications. It is an inclusive activity. Volunteering is a great leveller and a great satisfier for people who involve themselves in it.
	There is corporate social responsibility. Recently, we had the Edith Kahn memorial lecture, during which Jeff Schwartz , the chief executive of Timberland, made an enormously inspiring speech about how volunteering has worked in his corporation and in other companies in America. Every employee of Timberland automatically receives 40 hours of paid time to do volunteering work. That is from the chief executive right down to the person working on the front desk. That time is shown on their pay slip every monthhow much time they have used and how much time they have still got. Everyone is encouragedit is not compulsoryto take up volunteering.
	On one day last year, across eight different countries, Timberland alone contributed 50,000 hours of human service for volunteering. Other companies in the states had similar big programmes. Hallmark has recently hired a senior leader to be involved in market-based solutions to social challenges. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) about the work that Vodafone does. Many of our big companies do a great deal of work in this area, but we need to do a lot more. Jeff Schwartz said:
	Corporate citizenship must be more demanding than merely complying with all relevant laws.
	He had a vision that commerce and justice are not just antithetical notions. His definition of citizenship allowed a business run for profit to demand that sustainable returns were generated from shareholders, and also that business should be actively implicated in the strengthening of the civic square. He talked about inviting the engine of commerce to fit into the chassis of civic society. There is great complementarity, and it is a rich vein of volunteering, along with help and persistence for the advancement of all that we should be doing in this country. How do we go about it? We need to encourage more corporate schemes. We need to encourage more people to become involved individually. We need to make it easier and more convenient for people to become involved.
	I move on briefly to young carers. One in eight people in England is a carer. Three in five carers look after someone with a disability. There are 855,000 carers who provide more than 50 hours of caring per week. The 2001 census estimated that there were just 17,000 young carers. The real estimates from the Princess Royal Trust for Carers suggest that the total is nearer 100,000. People are doing remarkable work in looking after, in most cases, relatives with serious physical and mental disabilities.
	Sixty five per cent. of UK carers believe that their career prospects have been affected. Seventy four per cent. of carers are currently in paid employment and use their annual leave for caring. As the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho) mentioned, the effect on carers' health is considerable and we need to do more about that. Any projects that are designed for carers caring for carers should be applauded. Young carers come to Parliament, as they did recently with the all-party children's group. They face a problem with their school careers. In most instances, there is not an understanding linked teacher in a school who can appreciate the particular needs of a young carer.
	A young carer may need access to a phone at work because mum or dad, for whom they are caring, needs to have a visit or needs to be checked on at various times during the day. Young carers do not have time to grow up. They do not have the opportunity to spend time with their friends and to participate in a normal social life that any normal teenager would hope and expect to enjoy. They choseoften they did not have any choiceto look after their parents. We should be in the business of making that job easier, not in the business of putting obstacles in their way.
	There is so much that we can do and I have so little time to set things out. Certainly, we should have a linked person in each school. Ofsted should have a role in examining young carer strategies in schools. Best practice should be disseminated more widely to make the role of young carers easier, and the Minister could make a start by attending the young carers weekend later this month, where he will learn that impressive work is under way.
	Finally, the strength of volunteering is its independence, the harnessing of people's good will, freely given, and the diversity of their interests and involvement. We must appreciate volunteers and carers more. We must make their jobs easier, not put obstacles and bureaucracy in their way, including Criminal Records Bureau checks, which are necessary but must be balanced. Government Departments should do more to promote volunteering, and they should sign up to a code of practice on volunteering. We should streamline funding, as hon. Members have said, as there is too much paperwork for voluntary organisations, which constantly have to reapply for funds.
	There should be a level playing field for partnerships with volunteer organisations, and we must acknowledge young carers and do much more for them. We should offer assistance in schools, and make genuine provision for respite care. Hon. Members have had a good opportunity to plug voluntary organisations in their constituencies, and the whole House has had good opportunity to thank the millions of volunteers and carers up and down the country who do an invaluable job, day in, day out, that would otherwise cost the Government an enormous amount. It is time, as the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said, to butter parsnips and do more than offer warm words. Hon. Members should look beyond the House and acknowledge the contribution of volunteers and carers, as well as the serious problems that they face, and produce a timetable for action.

Ivan Lewis: Everyone would agree we have had an excellent debate in which right hon. and hon. Members have rightly paid tribute to the many unsung heroes who make us proud of our constituencies and of our country.
	In a world of perpetual change, the selfless dedication of volunteers and carers is a beacon of light that keeps alive the timeless values of compassion, solidarity and service. Those individuals shatter the cynicism of people who portray today's society as one in which violence, antisocial behaviour and abuse are rife. Carers enable older and disabled people, as well as people with long-term chronic conditions, to remain at home with the dignity, autonomy and security that the rest of us take for granted. Whether it is the adult daughter or son caring 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year for an ageing parent, or the friend who makes daily visits to an adult with a learning disability, carers are in the front line in ensuring that all our citizens have the quality of life that we demand in a civilised and fair society.
	It is right to recognise that carers have their own practical and emotional needs, distinct from those of the people for whom they care, although that recognition is long overdue. We must strive to ensure that statutory and voluntary sector providers treat carers as equal and valued partners in the care and support offered to vulnerable people in all our communities. Volunteers are the living, breathing embodiment of a healthy civic society. Whether working under the auspices of a voluntary organisation, or simply making their own personal contribution, they are frequently at the heart of their communities. This month in my constituency, the Radcliffe carnival took place only because of the voluntary commitment of Ray and Hilda Veivers and Colin Jones. Next week's Prestwich carnival has been made possible by David Curtis and his Sunshine Team of volunteers. Every day in every community, volunteers make a difference to the lives of vulnerable people. The much maligned younger generation is often at the forefront of that service. Through Millennium Volunteers, faith groups, schools and universities, young people demonstrate their idealism, responsibility and commitment to helping others, shattering the illusion that the vast majority of young people are engaged in antisocial behavioura point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Patrick Hall) and the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband).
	The Government believe that the state alone cannot transform communities. We are committed to an enhanced role for third sector organisations in the development and delivery of high quality public sector services. The restoration of community solidarity and civic pride requires new, authentic partnerships between the state, third sector organisations, the private sector and active citizens. Professionals, volunteers and carers all have a distinct but crucial role to play in ensuring not only that we care for vulnerable people, but that they have a quality of life fitting in a civilised modern society.
	I come to some of the excellent contributions made by right hon. and hon. Members. The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), as usual, presented his argument in a reasonable and fair way, reflecting great credit on his contribution over many years, first in Bury, before he went, not entirely voluntarily, to North-East Bedfordshire. He rightly highlighted the contribution of sports volunteers. We ought to reflect on the massive contribution that volunteers made to the success of the Commonwealth games, which my home city, Manchester, was so proud to host. As we think about the World cup and our hosting of the Olympics, the careers of many of the successful footballers and athletes will start on Saturday and Sunday mornings, when volunteers enable young people to participate in sport. For many of our sporting heroes, that is how it all began.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned his pride in being Minister with responsibility for disabled people for some time. He did not refer to his time as Minister with responsibility for the Child Support Agency, which I know was a stretching and challenging period for him. He rightly drew attention to the success of the Eden project, which is an excellent example of best practice in terms of involving young people.
	In debates such as this, I always say that at the age of 14 I became involved in voluntary work with people with learning disabilities. By the time I reached the age of 16 or 17, I had decided that I wanted to work professionally in the voluntary sector in social care. I do not believe that I would ever have gone into politics or that I would be standing at the Dispatch Box making this speech if I had not been connected at the age of 14 with that voluntary work with those people with learning disabilities, which made me think very differently about the kind of society I wanted to live in and the kind of contribution I wanted to make. That applies to large numbers of young people, who become involved on a voluntary basis and then decide that they want to make a contribution through public service. It is not just a matter of what people give, but of what they get through their own personal development and sense of satisfaction.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (David Lepper) and the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly spoke about young carers and our responsibility to identify their distinct needs, understand the pressures that they face daily, and recognise that in the education system and the health service we need to be better at identifying those young carers and providing the necessary support.
	The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) spoke about the definition of carers under the Department of Trade and Industry flexible working legislation. The Department is consulting on that legislation and will take account of views about such a definition before reaching a final decision. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis) has made a massive personal contribution in advancing the cause of carers during his period as a Member of the House. That was based on his own experiences. The Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004 will make a tremendous difference to carers' lives.
	The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) made some valid points about the difference between small and large charities, but I do not believe there is any need to attack larger charities. We must build the capacity of smaller charities in local communities. I remember that when I worked in the voluntary sector we had a slogan: Voluntary does not have to mean amateur. Vulnerable people depend on the activities of charities, so it is important that we do not think that voluntary organisations should not be accountable.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Lynda Waltho) spoke about the contribution of the Orchard partnership in her constituency, which sounds extremely innovative in its work. The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) raised a number of issues relating to work-life balance and family-friendly policies. I am sure he welcomes the Government's contribution in that respect.
	As we look ahead to the future, carers and volunteers know that the stakes are high. The Labour party in government is strengthening Britain with social justice as our eternal mission and as an integral part of our national success, whereas the Conservative party views the word compassionate purely as a political strategy to win power, not as the expression of common values. It is right that today, from all parts of the House, we pay tribute to the contribution of carers and volunteers.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House takes note of the immense contribution to society made by those honoured during the recent Volunteers Week and forthcoming Carers Week; recognises and values the significant economic and social benefits resulting from the work of volunteers and carers, often performed in difficult circumstances requiring the most selfless qualities; further notes the need to ensure that the fewest possible barriers are placed before those wanting to volunteer and act as carers; believes that encouragement should be given to all, especially the young, to consider volunteering as a contribution to the welfare of a healthy society; and expresses its thanks to all those who act as role models for volunteering and caring.

PETITIONS

Canvey Island (Housing Development)

Bob Spink: There is a serious problem in Castle Point as elsewhere in south Essex relating to the overdevelopment of our communities, and in particular the proliferation of flats, which puts intolerable pressure on our infrastructure, including water supply and treatment, and our roads.
	The petition, organised by Mr. and Mrs. Barham, is signed by only the neighbours to the development site, but it is representative of the feelings of the general public across my borough and much further afield.
	The petition states:
	To the House of Commons.
	The Petition of the residents of Canvey Island and others,
	Declares that the petitioners oppose the proposed development of ten flats and 14 parking spaces at 243-245 Eastern esplanade Canvey Island, on the grounds that it would cause extra traffic, noise and loss of privacy and would be detrimental to local residents' enjoyment of their homes.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons call upon the Government to refer the matter to Castle Point Borough Council and urge the Council to reject the application.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

Disabled Services (Exmouth)

Hugo Swire: My petition follows on rather appropriately from the debate on volunteers and carers and concerns the Liberal Democrat administration at county hall in Devon, which has agreed to become a fully commissioning organisation. There is deep concern in East Devon about the quality of future provision and the time scale of these changes, and my petition is signed by more than 2,000 concerned local people.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of Jayne Stuart, Sheila Marsden, Trish Dye and Sue Bamsey, staff members of Danby House, Mudbank Lane, Exmouth, Devon, and of service users and stakeholders,
	Declares that the petitioners oppose Devon County Council's proposal to cease delivering specialist residential services to people with physical disabilities in Exmouth, Devon.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to work with Devon County Council to ensure the continuance of current services on the existing Danby House site in conjunction with newly developed respite/holiday accommodation for people with physical disabilities.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

ASTHMA SERVICES

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Huw Irranca-Davies.]

Willie Rennie: I would first like to thank Mr. Speaker for selecting asthma services as the subject for this Adjournment debate. It is a subject close to my heart and I gather, although not from the number of Members present, that it is also a subject in which hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country are interested.
	I should like to introduce the background to the debate. World asthma day was on 2 May, and like many other hon. Members I attended a reception given by Asthma UK in this House. The Secretary of State for Health also attended the event and made encouraging noises about the need to improve health care provision for people with long-term conditions.
	I am grateful to the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), for coming here today to expand on the Secretary of State's comments, and I will be sure to leave her ample time to deal with the detail of the Government's thinking.
	My hope and intention is that today's debate can be a constructive one in which as many Members as possible are able to feed to the Minister some of their thoughts and concerns about asthma services in the UK. There is much to be commended in the work that the Government have done for people with asthma. If that is not clear later on in my speech, it is only because time is tight and I am keen to flag up gaps in provision and procedures that could be improved. In particular I wish to pass on what people with asthma have said to me, because there is no doubt that they are among the best judges of what does and does not work, and what could be improved.
	I have lived with asthma all my life. My sister, Caroline, had undiagnosed asthma for many years, and her quality of life suffered as a consequenceat one point, she ended up in hospital with pneumonia. Through my sister's experience, my shovel-like cough was identified as a symptom of asthma, which was diagnosed at the age of two. My elder son, Alexander, has had two extended visits to hospital in years two and three of his life. My other son, Stephen, who is just two, is showing all the signs of asthma, but he is yet to be diagnosed.
	In my previous life, I worked with Asthma UKat the time, it was known as the National Asthma Campaignon a number of campaigns, including a campaign on smoking in public places. I am delighted to see that a similar ban to that in Scotland will be introduced in the rest of the country, which will make a big improvement to the quality of life of people with asthma. Other important issues include the administration of medicines in schools and the redesign of asthma services.
	I have found ways to manage my asthma and, like many others with the condition, enjoy a number of sports and activities in which I would be unable to participate without proper medication. At this point, I challenge other hon. Members to join me in the Scottish coal-carrying championship, which takes place at the end of June. Competitors are required to carry a 1 cwt bag of coal for 1,000 m along the undulating main street in Kelty, my home village. Given the marathon sittings that hon. Members endure in this House, I imagine that they would find that a stroll in the park.
	I consider myself lucky that my asthma is relatively mild and controllable and that I have the wherewithal to pay for repeat prescriptions. I believe that the person should control the asthma rather than the asthma controlling the person. When GPs, nurses and pharmacists ask people with asthma whether their condition is under control, the people often say, Yes., but if they are asked whether they can climb stairs without wheezing, whether they can sleep for a whole night without wheezing and whether they can run for the bus, they often say, No. People accept far too much of their condition, and awareness needs to be raised among people with asthma about the quality of life that they could live.
	I have personal experience of the benefits of modern medicines and the value of asthma clinics. When I was in my 20s, I did not control my asthma well, and when I went to the asthma clinic, the nurse told me that I would die if I continued not to control it. That information was dramatic, and it shook me up. The nurse explained that if I did not manage my asthma, the blue inhaler would not work and my lungs would collapse during my next asthma attack. I took that information to heart and have controlled my asthma much betterthe modern medicines are fantastic. Nurses and pharmacists play as an important part as GPs, and they are skilled health professionals who should be encouraged to do even more. They are in the front line and face people with asthma all the time, and we should encourage them to do more to provoke people to reassess whether their condition is acceptable.
	Asthma is a disease of the lungs in which the airways are unusually sensitive to a wide range of triggers, including house dust mites, cold air, viral infectionsin my case, it is usually coldsor cut grass. Common triggers also include tobacco smoke and animal furinterestingly, people who live with a cat or dog in their early years tend not to suffer from animal sensitisation in later years, so not all animals are bad for people with asthma. The airways react to those triggers and become inflamed, resulting in symptoms of tightness and wheeziness in the chest. People suffering severe attacks find it nearly impossible to breathe and require rapid medication. Approximately 1,400 people die every year from asthma, and 90 per cent. of those deaths are preventable, which is a huge percentage that needs to be tackled.
	There are about 5.2 million people with asthma in the UK, which is one of the highest rates in the world. It affects one in eight children and one in 13 adults. An estimated 8 million people in the UK have been diagnosed with asthma at some stage in their livesan average of one in seven of the population. There are now three to four times more adult people with asthma in the UK and six times more children with the condition than 25 years ago. There is a big debate as to why that is the case. Asthma is a serious problem encountered by a large proportion of the population. There is currently no cure for it. Some people say that the problem largely disappears when they enter adulthood; many, however, live with it for life. It is a condition that they manage through their medication and lifestyle adaptations.
	At the end of January this year, the Government published their White Paper on health care outside hospitals, entitled, Our health, our care, our say, which came out of the consultation exercise, Your health, your care, your say. There is much to applaud in that White Paper and much for which people with asthma have been calling for many years. In particular, I welcome the recognition that better community-based care can reduce hospital admissions and thus costs. I will, however, press the Minister to take that logic further in relation to prescription charges.
	Several specific proposals will have come as welcome news for people with asthma. First, there are the plans to develop so-called information prescriptions and personal care plans for those with long-term conditions. They constitute an important recognition that people can be the best judges of their own needs. I hope that the Minister can confirm that information prescriptions will be just one part of a larger drive towards self-management of long-term medical conditions. I am sure that she will know that my colleagues have long espoused the value of self-management for the estimated 17.5 million people in Britain living with chronic conditions.
	The potential benefits of such an approach are considerable. For example, a person aware of the nature of their condition and empowered to control it should be less likely to require regular emergency treatment, thereby reducing the burden on stretched NHS resources. Asthma UK estimates that for every 1.60 spent on personal asthma action plans, 7 is saved on NHS care. Many people with asthma resent the feeling of powerlessness that comes with the uncertainty about when attacks might occur. A successful self-management programme should improve a person's mental health and self-esteem as well as promoting their long-term physical well-being. Self-management programmes could be integrated with greater use of voluntary sector organisations such as Asthma UK. There is no doubt that people with asthma looking to develop self-management programmes would benefit from the expert advice that voluntary sector organisations can offer and from the chance to talk to other people with asthma within that context.
	Will the Minister expand on how the Government see self-management programmes developing? In particular, may I encourage her to make a commitment to place a clear duty on local health commissioners to commission self-management packages for people with asthma involving patient groups in the design, delivery and evaluation? I hope that she will consult her colleagues in the Scottish Executive, who are funding a pilot project for personal health plans using asthma as the test condition. I am sure that lessons can be learned from each other's experience. The White Paper recognises that health professionals have not always been given sufficient incentives to manage long-term conditions. I have heard many GPs and consultants say that asthma is sorted, but when one hears people with asthma tell stories about what they have to put up with, it is clear that that is certainly not so.
	As I said, about 1,400 people die from asthma each year and about 90 per cent. of those deaths are preventable. It is worth taking a minute to consider how those deaths could have been avoided.
	First, it is important that people who are admitted to hospital with severe asthma attacks are seen by respiratory specialists. One in five people with asthma say that they do not get to see an asthma specialist when their asthma becomes hard to control. There must be adequate provision of asthma specialists across the board, from GPs and nurses with specific asthma training to respiratory specialists for emergency admissions and long-term support.
	Secondly, the Government must be willing to fund properly research into the causes, treatment, cure and prevention of asthma. Asthma UK already puts more funding into asthma research than the Government. A recent report by the UK clinical research collaborative found that respiratory diseases received disproportionately low funding, considering the number of people affected. Indeed, respiratory disease is now the most common illness responsible for emergency admissions to hospitals and kills more people than coronary heart disease.
	Above all, the Government must be committed to keeping people with asthma out of hospital by improving their day-to-day support. Nearly 200 people are admitted to hospital every day with emergency asthma attacks at a cost of nearly 80 million. As many as 75 per cent. of hospital admissions are probably preventable with proper long-term care and support.
	On 20 March, the Secretary of State called for a 30 per cent. reduction in hospital admissions. She estimated that that would save the NHS more than 400 million a year. The Government's health White Paper commits them to refocusing the quality and outcomes framework of the GP contract and changing the payment by result system to encourage greater concentration on managing long-term conditions. I welcome that and I hope that the Minister can expand on what it might mean for people with asthma who too often feel deprived of specialist advice on the day-to-day management of their condition.
	The role of the voluntary sector is vital. I hope hon. Members will not object if I focus on the services provided by Asthma UK as it is the example with which I am most familiar. That is not intended as a slight on the many other charities and support groups that provide excellent services for people with asthma, but I wish to highlight the role of Asthma UK because it has been developing the concept of self-management for some time. The Government could learn much from its example and establish a useful partnership with Asthma UK on the issue.
	Asthma UK provides an advice line, which is staffed by specialist nurses, who can offer advice on medication and effective self-management. It has also helped thousands of people develop personal asthma action plans or care plans, which already deliver genuine benefits in reducing symptoms and improving quality of life. However, research by Asthma UK suggests that only 24 per cent. of people with asthma have care plans. I know that the Minister will want to explain how the Government intend to extend such plans so that people with asthma have access to them.
	The Minister may be interested to hear about Asthma UK's control testa 60-second, five-point questionnaire that helps people to understand how their asthma is controlled, with a simple score out of 25. I tried it today and I am pleased to say that I scored 23 out of 25, which is not too bad. I encourage hon. Members to take part in the census because it is a good way in which to assess how well one's asthma is being controlled.
	I hope that the Minister will join me in applauding a joint collaboration between Asthma UK, the British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK, which have worked with primary care trusts, the Department of Health, the Healthcare Commission and the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to develop a so-called commissioners' toolkit. It is intended to outline examples of good practice in the treatment of long-term conditions such as asthma, heart conditions and diabetes and is to be made available to all commissioners of health care.
	The final issue that I would like to raise is, I believe, one of the most important, which ties in closely with the theme that I have sought to develop, namely reducing hospital admissions through encouraging self-management of asthma. It is prescription charges. The current system of exemptions from prescription charges dates from 1968 and makes little sense now, if it ever did. The Minister will remember the 2002 report by Mr. Wanless, entitled, Securing our Future Health: Taking a Long-Term View. In it, Mr. Wanless stated:
	The present structure of exemptions from prescription charges is not logical, nor rooted in the principles of the NHS. If related issues are being considered in future, it is recommended that the opportunity should be taken to think about the rationale for the exemption policy.
	Members will be familiar with the general arguments for extending exemptions to a greater range of long-term conditions, but I hope that they will forgive me if I reiterate some of the key points. The present system fails the test of fairness. People with diabetes and certain forms of epilepsy are exempt from prescription charges, but people with arthritis, asthma, mental illness and multiple sclerosis are not. Those with an underactive thyroid are exempt, but those with an overactive thyroid are not.
	The present system hits the poorest hardest. The Government's 2000 NHS plan states:
	New charges increase the proportion of funding from the unhealthy, old and poor compared with the healthy, young and wealthy. In particular, high charges risk worsening access to healthcare by the poor.
	People with incomes barely above the income support level have to meet the full cost of prescriptions, providing them with two disincentives: a disincentive to work and a disincentive to pay for necessary prescriptions. The knock-on effects of this problem are precisely those that we all wish to avoid. Prescription charges discourage people with asthma from taking medication to control their condition, and encourage them to think of treatment as something only to be taken in an emergency. This increases emergency hospital admissions, thus increasing costs to the NHS. It may also lead to a number of preventable deaths every year.
	I am pleased to report that the Scottish Executive are undertaking a review of prescription charges. They have recognised the innate unfairness in the system, and the extensive review will include a full literature review, consultation and debate. I hope that the Government will read the review documentation and have discussions with the Scottish Executive about their emerging conclusions.
	I do not expect the Minister to make new policy in this Chamber at this time. I would, however, welcome her personal view on how the system of exemptions for prescription charges might develop in the future. As she knows, my party committed itself at the last election to an independent review to suggest reforms to the system of exemptions. I would be grateful if she could tell me whether she sees merit in this suggestion. I would also be grateful to hear the views of others on this matter. It is my view that free prescriptions for people with asthma would do much to help them to control their condition and live normal lives, and I would welcome a range of views on the issue.
	I would now like to give the Minister a chance to give a full response, and I hope that she will make specific reference to the important issues that I have raised about people with asthma.

Rosie Winterton: I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Willie Rennie) on securing this important debate today. I saw by the way in which he set out his personal experiences how strongly he feels about this issue. I would also like to join him in paying tribute to the outstanding contribution of bodies such as Asthma UK, and I shall say more about their work later.
	As the hon. Gentleman graphically described, there are approximately 5 million people whose lives are blighted by asthma to a greater or lesser degree. The big challenge is to find ways for people to manage their condition through medication and lifestyle adaptation. Again, the hon. Gentleman described his personal experience in that regard. Our aim for patients is certainly to move away from care that is reactive, unplanned and episodic, and to put in place an approach that is centred on early detection, disease management and promoting independence. That will involve offering a personalised care plan and improving care in primary and community-based services, particularly for the most vulnerable people. Such an approach will not only improve personal health outcomes for people with long-term conditions; it will also reduce avoidable hospital visits. The hon. Gentleman touched on that issue as well, and I hope that he will welcome our commitment to trying to reduce emergency bed days by 5 per cent. by 2008.
	This whole programme of work, which is called Supporting People with Long-term Conditions, was launched in 2005. It set out a new NHS and social care model specifically designed to help local NHS and social care organisations to improve care for people with long-term conditions.
	From the outset, self-care has been a vital component of that model. We want to help NHS organisations to develop a local self-care strategy, which means working with local agencies, the community, the voluntary sector andas the hon. Gentleman saidthe people themselves and their carers. As the hon. Gentleman also said, part of that involves information prescription. I am happy to reassure him that information prescription is an important part of our approach to self-management.
	I am glad that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the White Paper. The theme of community-based services and supported self-care for people with long-term conditions and their families, especially those with asthma, emerged strongly in our consultation. Here again joined-up thinking and working is vital, and not just between health and social care partners. As we said in the White Paper, local strategic partnerships will be responsible for the delivery of services and for ensuring that they are genuinely integrated and, crucially, focused on the needs of individuals.
	The hon. Gentleman mentioned the work of the Scottish Executive. We shall, of course, want to hear and learn from our colleagues in Scotland, and elsewhere for that matter, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that the PRODIGY system that is used in GP surgeries in England generates personalised asthma action plans based on guidelines produced by the British Thoracic Society and the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network.

Willie Rennie: Will the Minister give way?

Rosie Winterton: I will give way, but because the hon. Gentleman has not left me much time, I may not be able to deal with all the points that he raised if I do.

Willie Rennie: As I think the Minister will admit, self-care is not about simply letting people loose or letting them free. It probably requires harder work to arrange for them to be included in self-management plans. Self-management plans are not simply about printed forms; they are about agreements and partnerships.

Rosie Winterton: That is absolutely true. The expert patient programme, for instance, has proved to be a very good way of helping people to manage their conditions and learn about them. I realise that it is not always easy, but the benefits are enormous.
	It has been the policy of successive Governments that those who can afford to make a small contribution to the costs of medicines should do so. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the existing list of medical conditions that give exemption from prescription charges has been reviewed on a number of occasions, but no clear-cut case for extending it has emerged. There is no consensus on additional conditions that might be included, or on how distinctions could be drawn between one condition and another or between a mild form of a condition and a severe one. It is a difficult issue, and it has been considered, but I am sorry to tell the hon. Gentleman that we currently have no plans to extend that particular list. What we have been doing is giving priority to helping those who have difficulty in paying charges. Nearly 90 per cent. of prescriptions are already issued free of charge because of the extensive exemption and charge remission arrangements.
	The hon. Gentleman described the vital role of the voluntary sector, and I entirely agree with what he said. He spoke of the work done by Asthma UK in raising awareness of the condition, and mentioned the reception attended by the Secretary of State on world asthma day. That constituted a vital contribution to the development of national policy.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to the commissioners' toolkit that Asthma UK has been working on with my Department. It will be extremely useful in ensuring that there are good services at a local level for people with asthma. The Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), who is responsible for public health, has discussed smoking policies with Asthma UK, and I know that she found that very useful.
	Asthma UK has done a lot of work at a local level. There is a project in West Sussex that provides swimming lessons for children with asthma, and a project in Hackney is training 80 people in self-management and in how to live healthy lifestyles. Those are exactly the kind of approaches that the hon. Gentleman set out.
	Last July, my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality, in his former role as Minister with responsibility for care services, announced the Third Sector Commissioning Task Force. Its programme is to identify barriers to achieving that strong relationship between the voluntary and public sectors. We want to promote that relationship, but we must ensure that we look out for barriers and see what we can do to assist in removing them.
	In terms of asthma specialists, we have more doctors, nurses and other health care professionals than ever before within the NHS. It is from that expanded work force that specialists of all kinds will be drawn.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked about research. The agency through which we carry out research is the Medical Research Council. We consider the ways in which we can contribute to increasing research in all areas.
	I hope that I have given an indication of how the Government have put the concerns of those living with long-term conditions at the heart of our reform agenda. Diseases such as asthma present a massive challenge to the health and social care system. It is a challenge that will need to be met by services that benefit not only from the increased funding in the system, but from the reforms to service delivery. By focusing on the needs of patients, we empower them to take control of their own health and care.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes to Eight o'clock.